


Borrowed Ghosts

by DiscordantWords



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Don't copy to another site, Drinking, Episode: s04e02 The Lying Detective, Fandom Trumps Hate, Forgiveness, Ghost Mary, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, John is a Mess, M/M, Minor Molly Hooper/Greg Lestrade, No Hug Scene, Pining Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson, TFP Does Not Exist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 57,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21975769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiscordantWords/pseuds/DiscordantWords
Summary: In the aftermath of the Culverton Smith case, John spent one painfully stilted afternoonhanging outwith Sherlock. He counted the minutes, finished his tea, and left for home without ever clearing the air between them.And once he'd left, he found it very hard to go back.
Relationships: John Watson & Rosamund Mary "Rosie" Watson, Molly Hooper & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes & Greg Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes & Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes & Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 465
Kudos: 829
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AllTheThings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllTheThings/gifts).



> This story is for AllTheThings, who so very generously bid on me in the Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction, and who had an idea I could not stop thinking about: **what if John had left at the end of TLD without any confession or hug?** Thank you so much for your patience with me, and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> A million thanks to my wonderful beta, [verdant_fire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdant_fire/pseuds/verdant_fire). 
> 
> There is a lot of angst ahead, and it will likely get worse before it gets better, but I do promise a happy ending.
> 
> Now with [beautiful art by Khorazir!](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/633416751341846528/inktober-2020-30-snowed-in-ink-and-watercolour)

*

Molly was three minutes and forty-two seconds late. 

The front door opened and shut—at least she'd finally got over her habit of knocking—and her footfalls on the stairs were rushed but not panicked. Ergo: apologetic about being late, but not worried. The apology would be issued to John, not to Sherlock, as it was John's shift she was meant to be relieving. 

Well. That was no longer entirely accurate, as John had departed twenty three-minutes and forty-two seconds ago. 

John had said _Rosie,_ and John had said _you didn't kill Mary_ in a forced and halting voice. And perhaps he'd been sincere, but he'd looked terribly uncomfortable to be spending time with Sherlock at all, his gaze had kept skittering away from Sherlock's face, and he'd seemed painfully relieved when Sherlock had assured him that he could last twenty minutes without supervision. He'd looked at Sherlock with a bland and tired face and he'd said _tomorrow, six 'til ten,_ as if spending time at Baker Street had become simply another tedious shift at a job he did not want. 

And then John had left. 

Sherlock had listened to his steps on the stairs—forceful, hasty, not allowing himself time to rethink his decision—and had flinched a bit at the slam of the door. 

He'd spent a few moments thinking about the drugs he did not want in the hiding places no one knew about. And then his phone had moaned—Irene, with a birthday greeting—and he'd welcomed the distraction. He didn't text her back, of course, but running through several hypothetical exchanges as an intellectual exercise had kept him occupied for nearly twelve minutes. 

By then his tea had grown cold. And so he'd carried his mug into the kitchen and set it on the counter. He'd refilled the kettle and turned it on, stood tapping his fingers impatiently against the countertop while it boiled.

He'd thought a bit more about cocaine. Then the kettle had clicked off, and so he'd poured himself another mug of tea. He'd waited for it to steep, watching the steam curl towards the ceiling, and then carried it carefully back into the sitting room. Sat down. Looked at John's empty mug on the table by his empty chair. 

Molly came in the door. She was smiling, but looked flustered. Strands of long hair had worked loose from her ponytail. It was windy outside. 

Her smile fell as she stepped into the sitting room. She looked at John's chair. 

"Oh," she said. "Am I very late?" 

"Three minutes and forty-two seconds," Sherlock said. 

She stepped further into the room, her lips pressed into a tight line. 

Sherlock shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling strangely exposed. He opened his mouth to speak, not sure, exactly, what it was he intended to say. 

"Did John leave, um, three minutes and forty-two seconds ago?" she asked quietly. 

Sherlock took a sip of his tea. Swallowed carefully, as it was still hot. Set the mug back down. 

"No," he said. 

She looked at him. Her face was sad. She saw too much, he thought. She always had. 

"Oh," she said. "All right. Um. Are you—?"

"I'm not high." 

"I wasn't asking if—"

"Yes, you were." 

She bit her lip. Nodded. "All right," she said again. 

They looked at each other for a moment. Sherlock tapped his fingers restlessly against his thighs. Molly glanced at John's empty chair as if she meant to sit down, seemed to think better of it. Went to the sofa instead. 

"Happy birthday," she said, after a long and heavy silence. Her voice was careful. 

Sherlock stopped tapping his fingers. Regarded her curiously. "Thank you," he said. 

"I know you don't usually celebrate," she said. She was looking down at her lap. "But. Maybe this year? Since you're still alive. Oh, no—" she stopped, shook her head. "I didn't mean it that way. Of course you're still alive. It's just—well. It's been a hard year, hasn't it?" 

He considered. Last year he'd spent his birthday crouched in a skip with John, waiting for a burglar to descend via a convenient overhead fire escape. He'd stepped in a partially rotted banana. The smell had been overwhelming. 

There had been very little room in the skip, and John had been very close. His breath had puffed hot and insistent against Sherlock's cheek. Their shoulders had brushed. Sherlock had not cared overmuch about the rotten banana. 

Mary had not been dead. Nor had she been with them. She'd been home, heavily pregnant. She'd sent them both a text advising them to _have fun._ There had been a chase, and a brief scuffle. John had laughed. 

He supposed it had, in fact, been a rather long and difficult road between that last birthday and this one. And what Molly said was true: he was still alive. 

"Yes," he said, finally, aware even as he was speaking that far too much time had gone by since she'd asked her question. "It has." 

Molly gave him a sad smile. She did not seem to mind that he'd taken a long time to speak. 

"Cake," she said.

He blinked. "Sorry?" 

"Cake. It's your birthday. We should have cake." 

"Why would I—" 

"Because that's what people do on birthdays, Sherlock. You have cake. Someone puts a candle in it and sometimes there's an entire chorus of waiters to sing to you and it's all terribly embarrassing and you'll absolutely hate it and we should go, we should go _right now_ , and have cake." 

He frowned at her. "A . . . chorus of waiters?" 

"Yes," she said firmly, standing up.

He hesitated, debated the merits of refusing. She would inevitably invite Mrs Hudson along, and Lestrade, and he'd have to listen to the three of them nattering on. 

He looked at John's empty chair. At John's empty mug.

He thought about the cocaine he'd stashed away underneath a false bottom in his pants drawer. Molly could be distracted, he knew. She was sharp-eyed but generally more trusting than John. At some point, she'd let her guard down. He could make a game of it, see how much he could take before she noticed.

He swallowed, hard. Thought of John, stiff-shouldered and reluctant in the doorway. _Tomorrow. Six 'til ten,_ he'd said. That wasn't very far away, really. 

"Cake," he said, looking up at Molly. It took more effort than he would have liked to drag his thoughts away from the cocaine hidden away in his pants drawer. Perhaps it would not be much of a fun game after all. "All right." 

She gave him a tentative smile, hesitant and genuine. And she had the good grace not to point out that his own answering smile was clearly forced.

*

He slept poorly. 

The cocaine in his pants drawer called to him, but Mrs Hudson had taken the overnight shift and Mrs Hudson was _terrifying_ when she wanted to be. If he slipped up, he thought it likely that he'd end up handcuffed again. Or possibly shot. 

So instead he lounged in a half-doze on the sofa and let her carry on about a variety of inane subjects: Mr Chatterjee's fickle affections, the truly appalling price of petrol these days, the state of her bins, Mrs Turner's dubious taste in clothing. 

At some point, she cleared away John's empty mug. It rather ruined the illusion that John had simply stepped out for a moment. 

It was for the best, he supposed. There was little point in engaging in idle fantasy. 

"How's your eye, dear?" she asked him. 

He shrugged, stared up at the ceiling. His eye did not bother him, though the skin along his brow pinched and itched where the split skin had been carefully sutured.

She tsked and fussed over him a bit, went so far as to tuck a blanket around his shoulders. He was struck with a helpless wave of fondness for her. He chalked it up to the withdrawal. 

The fire cast a warm glow over the sitting room. It was cosy. He watched the flames dance well into the night and did not get up. 

Lestrade arrived just before noon the next day, settled in on the sofa and turned on the telly. He left a stack of files on the kitchen counter. 

It was clear he expected Sherlock to take an interest in them, blatantly obvious from how conspicuously he avoided mentioning them. 

Sherlock did his best to resist, at first. He resented clumsy attempts at trickery or manipulation. Truth be told, he resented thoughtful, nuanced attempts at trickery or manipulation even more. It rarely worked. What was the point? 

But Lestrade's taste in telly was atrocious, and the only other thing of interest in the flat was pressed into a small white baggie at the bottom of his pants drawer. And Lestrade would have been easier to fool than Molly, but John had said _six 'til ten_ , and that was only six hours away.

He looked at the first file. And then the second, and then the third. 

"It was the brother," he told Lestrade, tossing the first file onto the sofa cushion next to him. "The girlfriend," he said, adding the second to the pile. He held up the third folder, waggled it in the air. "Not a murder at all. Accidental choking. Broken ribs were posthumous, a failed attempt at resuscitation. The witness was afraid of being wrongly accused—correctly, it seems—and fled the scene."

Lestrade muted the telly, looked up at him. "What? Really?" 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, tossed the third folder on top of the pile. "Try harder next time." 

Lestrade looked at him for a moment. Smiled, looked back at the telly. 

Sherlock sat down in his chair, bored again. He checked his watch. It was five-thirty. John had said _six 'til ten,_ and John would know immediately if Sherlock had got into the cocaine. And Sherlock did not have to be a genius to know that, if that happened, John would not come back again. 

He fidgeted in his chair. Stood up. Walked to the sofa. 

Lestrade looked up at him. "What are you doing?" 

Sherlock ignored him, moved the files to the coffee table. Sat down and pulled his knees under his chin. Stared at the telly. 

"Hm," Lestrade said, and then blessedly fell silent. 

At exactly six o'clock, the front door opened. 

Sherlock stood up, smoothed his hands down his dressing gown. Hesitated for a moment, and then crossed the room to his chair. Sat down again. He was aware of Lestrade's eyes on him and refused to acknowledge him. 

Footsteps on the stairs. 

Sherlock sat forward, frowning, because they were all wrong. Instead of John's steady stride, these were lighter, quicker. Almost like—

Molly pushed through the doorway into the sitting room, her face pale and pinched with sorrow, and Sherlock knew without her needing to say a word. 

"Oh," Lestrade said, standing up, scratching at the back of his head. "Hi. Wasn't—?"

Sherlock tuned him out. Stood up. Brushed past Molly and went through the kitchen, down the hall into his bedroom. Shut the door. 

His room was quiet. Clean, uncluttered. He stood for a moment with his back to the door, staring at nothing. He felt quite calm. 

That was it, then.

He and John had traversed separate hells, had come out the other side with a gap too far between them to be bridged. All of the years they'd known each other, all of the things they'd done to each other, all of the things they'd done _for_ each other, all culminating in one painfully polite afternoon and a shared pot of tea. 

John would not be back. 

The truth of it was written in Molly's briefly glimpsed face, twisted and apologetic. And it had, Sherlock supposed, been written in John's face as well the day before, uncomfortable and grim. 

_I'm six 'til ten,_ John had said in that flat voice, and he'd not been lying at the time—Sherlock was quite sure of that. He'd intended to follow through on his promise. Not lying, no, but certainly unenthusiastic. It hadn't been _hanging out,_ after all, it had been working a shift. An obligation. He'd been dreading it. He'd been dreading it and so he'd changed his mind. 

And he'd sent Molly in his stead. 

_Save John Watson,_ Mary had begged, and Sherlock had, in the only way he knew how. 

He now found himself forced to admit that saving John Watson was not the same thing as keeping him. 

He cursed his own weakness, his own helpless affection. John had seen Mary's message, after all, had heard her say _the man we both love,_ had seen the pathetic wretched truth of it written on Sherlock's face. 

And still John had left. 

_Don't go,_ he'd wanted to say, but instead he'd looked up at John standing stiff-backed and uncomfortable in the doorway, had choked the unwelcome words down. John had not wanted to stay. John no longer believed him responsible for Mary's death, but that did not mean that John wanted anything more to do with him. 

Their friendship had died on the floor of the London Aquarium. Sherlock had been the only one foolish enough to hope it could be revived. 

He tugged open his pants drawer, felt around for the false bottom and popped it loose. 

_Is this what you've been reduced to?_ Mycroft's voice drawled from somewhere in his mind palace, bored and utterly unimpressed. _Throwing away your hard-won sobriety because someone's hurt your_ feelings? _Dreadfully cliché, don't you think?_

"It's only been a week, I'm hardly sober," Sherlock said out loud. He felt around in the compartment, cupped the little baggie in his palm. 

It was the wrong texture. 

He knew it as soon as he touched it, but he withdrew his hand from his drawer anyway, peered down at it to get a better look. 

Sugar. Someone had replaced the contents of his stash with sugar.

Mrs Hudson, of course. It couldn't have been anyone else. Mycroft would have simply taken it. Lestrade would have had him arrested, _for his own good,_ before making the charges disappear. And John would have—John would have attempted to _talk_ to him about it.

She was the only one who'd have dared to be cheeky. 

It was a bit distressing that she'd managed to do so without him noticing. He really _had_ been slipping. 

He threw the baggie at the wall. It landed with a halfhearted thud, slid to the ground without even giving him the satisfaction of splitting open. He wanted quite badly to be angry, but did not have the energy. 

He could go out the window, he knew. Could find someone to sell to him. Wiggins was likely being monitored, but Wiggins was hardly the only dealer in London.

The thought did not hold any real appeal. He was tired. His limbs ached. His heart ached.

 _I'm six 'til ten,_ John had said. 

And now it was past six, and Molly Hooper was the one in his sitting room. She'd pulled her hair back in a messy ponytail. He had not paid her any mind at all as he'd brushed past, not consciously, but some part of him had noted and catalogued it regardless. She normally took more care with her hair. She'd rushed to make it on time. She hadn't been expecting it, then. John had given her no warning. 

Sherlock hadn't been expecting it, either. Foolish. He'd even been given a warning, but he'd ignored the signs. 

He wondered if Lestrade had left yet, or if he was still out there, sharing tense concerned words with Molly. Any moment now, one of them would feel the need to check on him—

"Sherlock?" Molly’s voice, a tentative tapping on his door. 

Ah. Right on time. 

He sat down on his bed, put his head in his hands. Did not answer. He could seek out all the drugs he wanted, but there would be no escape from this. 

"Sherlock."

The doorknob turned. He lifted his head. He could banish her with a shout, he knew. She'd leave him be if he carried on enough. 

The door eased open. Molly in the hallway, Lestrade behind her. Two for one. Delightful. He must have looked worse than he'd thought.

"I’m sorry," Molly said. Her voice was grave, as if someone had died. She looked as if she wanted to cry. 

He supposed he could deduce the entirety of her conversation with John if he tried. And if he asked, she'd tell him. Though he had been rather badly stung the last time she'd passed along a message. 

"Oi—" Lestrade said. He'd spotted the baggie on the floor. 

"Oh, use your eyes," Sherlock snapped, because anger was easier. He did not need to dig very far to find it. "It's sugar. Clearly Mrs Hudson's been in my pants drawer." 

Molly and Lestrade exchanged glances. 

"Sugar?" Lestrade stooped to retrieve the baggie, frowned doubtfully at it. Put it in his pocket. 

Sherlock studied him. He'd clearly changed his plans in order to remain at Baker Street for the remainder of the evening. He'd done so quickly, quietly, and without much complaint. Not work—he'd not have begged off a shift no matter how guilty or obligated he felt. A social engagement then. And not one he was particularly attached to. 

_I'm six 'til ten,_ John had said. 

Sherlock shut his eyes, attempted to banish John from his head. "Did you tell her you weren't keen when you cancelled? Otherwise you'll get her hopes up and she'll just keep trying to reschedule." 

Lestrade made a garbled sound. 

"Second date. Obvious. The first didn't exactly light your fire, but as it clearly wasn't an absolute disaster you felt obliged to try again. Not _that_ obliged, though, since you jumped at the first chance to call it off." 

"You know, even after all this time, that's—" 

"Yes, I know. Astonishing. Impressive. Amazing. Unbelievable." 

"Bloody annoying, actually," Lestrade said.

Sherlock opened his eyes. His mouth attempted to form a smile without permission. 

"Do you want—?" Molly started.

"You can hardly drag me out for cake every time you want to distract me," Sherlock said. He tried to sound bored, but feared the end result was rather brittle. He looked away.

"I could try," Molly offered. She sniffed, a miserable little sound that might have started as a laugh. 

Sherlock smiled at her, because she was kind, and if he'd learned nothing else it was that kindness should not be met with derision. And he shook his head, because what she wanted for him was impossible. 

"That's a fool's errand," he said. 

Lestrade shifted where he stood, his hand pressed against his pocket as if the little bag of sugar might leap out. He looked uncomfortable and unhappy. And half-bewildered, but that was his default state and, as such, not particularly remarkable.

"Well, I—" Lestrade said. He hesitated, looked at Molly, then at Sherlock, seemed to rally. "I already cancelled my date. So there's no need for me to rush off."

"Oh," Molly said, her face lighting up. She nodded, a bit too enthusiastic, a bit too earnest. "Good, then. That's—that's good."

"I'll call for takeaway, yeah?" Lestrade said. He patted his pocket, frowned. "And—er—I'll just flush this." 

"Just put it in the sugar bowl," Sherlock said. 

"Just in case." 

"In case it spontaneously turns into cocaine? That _would_ be a good trick." 

Lestrade sighed, put his hands up. Went out of the room muttering to himself, but there did not seem to be any real heat to it. 

Molly did not leave.

Sherlock looked at her. There was a determined twist to her mouth. 

"I told John—" she started.

"I don't think it much matters what you told him," Sherlock said, not unkindly. "Do you?" 

She looked down at the ground. "We're not—this isn't an _obligation._ We're not here because—because we're supposed to be, or because it's the right thing to do." 

He stared steadily back at her, not speaking, not acknowledging the way his gut had twisted at the word _obligation._

"We're here because we care. About you. And we'll be here as long as you need. You do—you _do_ know that, right?" 

He blinked. Blinked again. His face felt hot, his skin uncomfortably flushed. He swallowed. "If you use dishes, be sure to do the washing up. Mrs Hudson has been on the warpath." 

Molly shut her eyes. "Sherlock—"

"Good night, Molly," he said, and steered her towards the door. He shut it behind her. Stood listening as she hesitated and eventually made her way down the hall. 

He went back to his bed, flopped down on his back.

There was a room in his mind palace where John lived, a John who was both quick-tempered and quick-witted, who offered praise when warranted and guidance when necessary. Sherlock went there, now, trailed his hand along the wall as he moved through the familiar corridors. 

The door was locked.

There was a shop sign hanging from the door, swaying gently against the wood. CLOSED, it proclaimed in bold white letters against a red background. Beneath it, in smaller print, it read: HOURS 6:00 - 10:00. 

He touched the sign, ran his fingertips along the print. The neatly lettered hours flaked away, crumbling and drifting towards the ground, leaving nothing in their wake but an expanse of smooth red. 

CLOSED, the sign now read. It seemed a more permanent proclamation. The door remained locked. 

He blinked back to awareness, looked up at the ceiling of his bedroom. His eyes stung. 

Outside, in the sitting room, he could make out the low murmur of voices, the quiet drone of the telly. Lestrade and Molly, settling in for the evening. 

He looked at the window. He could leave, he knew. Could slip out and vanish into the underbelly of the city without either of them realising until it was too late.

He was tired. It all seemed like far too much effort.

He turned away. Listened to the muffled telly, the familiar voices. Closed his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

*

Culverton Smith was on the telly. 

John had the volume muted, but could not bring himself to look away from that smug, leering face. The news stations played an endless cycle of clips—Smith at charity dinners, Smith cutting the ribbon at the grand opening of his hospital wing, Smith smiling for the camera, Smith at bloody Wimbledon.

And Sherlock, of course. There was no escaping Sherlock. Not after this. 

He was the hero of the hour, so the media had chosen flattering photographs. There was only one short clip of him looking . . . unwell. And even then, the angle and editing managed to make him look less like an out-of-control junkie and more like some kind of unshaven avenging angel striding into St Caedwalla's Hospital to slay a dragon, John at his heels. 

As always. 

Except—not always. Not really. Not anymore. 

Outside, the sky had darkened. The clock ticked past five o'clock.

"John," Mary said. 

He ignored her. Poured himself a drink.

Rosie was with the sitter. He'd made arrangements for her so that he could take his turn at Baker Street, relieving Molly or Greg or whoever had taken the shift before him. He was due there by six. 

Babysitting Sherlock. _Keeping an eye_ on Sherlock, as if any such thing could possibly matter, as if he couldn't run circles around all of them if he wanted to.

So what it really amounted to was simply keeping Sherlock company. _Hanging out,_ as Sherlock himself had said. 

The last shift had been unbearable. Sitting awkwardly in his chair and sipping tea and making stilted conversation, all the while trying not to look too closely at Sherlock's mangled face. 

Sherlock had been hunched and wounded, unshaven and miserable. An injured animal curled in on itself. Cautious. Diminished. He'd been _polite,_ for God's sake. He'd looked at John with a searching, pleading expression, and John had no idea what it was that he wanted, what on earth he thought John could possibly give him. 

It hurt, looking at Sherlock. It made John feel like his own skin had been stretched too tightly over his frame, tugged over his bones and stapled crudely in place. Like whatever was roaring in his chest was too big to contain, like one twist in the wrong direction might split him open, spilling his wretched core out onto the ground for all to see. 

He had already seen what was inside of him, had got a good close look at it, and it was ugly. It was ugly, and what was worse, it had felt _good_ to let it out. 

He did not want to see it again. He did not want to _feel_ it again. 

There had been a time, years ago, where he'd thought Sherlock brought out the best in him.

Not anymore.

Now, Sherlock did not even have to speak, the very sight of him was enough. It made John want to scream. It made him want to throw things, to kick, to shatter, to tear apart. To hurt. 

And at the same time, he wanted to fall to his knees in front of his friend and beg forgiveness, wanted to wipe away the whole of the last terrible year, wanted Sherlock close, wanted his inappropriate comments and sly little jokes, his cleverness and audacity and entirely misplaced devotion.

He could not go on like this.

"John," Mary said again. "What are you doing?" 

He finished his drink, chanced a glance in her direction. She was wearing the grey t-shirt she'd died in. 

He looked away from her, picked up his phone. Dialed. 

"John?" Molly's voice. She'd picked up midway through the first ring. "Is everything—?"

"Look, something’s come up," he said, cutting her off. "I'm not going to be able to make it tonight. Sorry. For the short notice. I hope it's not too inconvenient."

"It's five-thirty," Molly said. She sounded startled. She should not be startled, he thought. She should have seen this coming. "You're supposed to be there at six to—" 

"Yes, well, I'm not. Someone else will have to do it." He looked at his empty glass.

"John," she said. She'd gone from startled to pleading. "You can't do this. He's been—he's been waiting for you. He needs you." 

"Ha," John said. "He doesn't need anyone but himself."

He clenched his hand around the phone. Walked back into the kitchen and poured himself another drink. Set the bottle down on the counter with more force than necessary. 

"You don't mean that." 

"What's he ever done for us?" John asked, bracing his hands on the counter, the phone tucked against his ear. "He does what he wants, damn the consequences. And he just expects the people around him to pick up the pieces. He—he—" he did not know what he wanted to say. His throat burned. 

_Go to hell._

He could hear Molly breathing, short sharp shocked little huffs. 

"I have my own child to consider, now. I can't take on another. Sorry," he said. 

"How can you even say that? How can you—after what he did for you?"

"What, exactly, did he do for me, Molly? Dive headfirst into a pile of drugs? Somehow I don't think that was much of a sacrifice." 

_Go to hell._

_Save John Watson._

"That's not—" 

He hung up without waiting to hear what she had to say. Set his phone face down on the counter. Picked up his drink. 

*

He did not sleep well. 

When he closed his eyes he was back in the morgue at St Caedwalla's. Sherlock was on the slab, slack-faced and grey-skinned. His eyes were closed. 

_Doesn't he look peaceful?_ Culverton Smith asked. _Lucky boy. Not everyone gets the chance to stay in my favourite room._

John looked away, dizzy and sick. There was a small puddle of congealing blood on the tile floor by the wall of drawers. He stared at it. 

It had come from Sherlock, he knew. Sherlock's nose. His mouth. The split skin over his eye. It had run down and pooled there on the ground while John went on kicking him. 

_I told housekeeping to leave it,_ Smith said, following John's gaze, pointing a gloved hand at the blood. _I like the way it looks._

John sat up, breathing hard, his skin cold and clammy. 

Mary was at the foot of his bed, watching him. 

"You've had too much to drink," she said. "It's interfering with your sleep." 

"I know that," he said. "Doctor, remember?" 

She looked at him for a long time. Her face was expressionless in the darkness. "You owe Molly Hooper an apology." 

He passed a shaking hand over his face. 

He did not have it in him to argue. He would, after all, only be arguing with himself. "I know," he said.

"Sherlock, too." 

He breathed out hard, through his teeth. Said nothing. 

"He didn't want you to leave," Mary said. "It was written all over his face. He wanted you to stay." 

John had not wanted to stay. What he _had_ wanted was to escape the choking atmosphere in the flat, to get away from Sherlock and his bruised face and his hurt eyes.

"Why should he always get what he wants?" John asked. He supposed he would be arguing after all.

"You could have talked," Mary pressed.

John shook his head. "Shut up," he told her. "I've done enough talking." 

"And using Rosie as an excuse?" Mary's voice went hard. "That was low. Where is Rosie now, John?" 

Something flared in him, something that might have been alarm. It was dulled, suffocated by drink and exhaustion and the ever-present hum of anger. 

"Shut up," he said again. His voice was hoarse, his mouth dry. He closed his eyes, swallowed painfully. He felt as though he had been dropped from a great height. "You're not my first ghost." 

*

There were four missed calls from Rosie's sitter when John picked up his phone in the morning. He swallowed hard, dread pooling in his stomach. 

The morning sunlight filtering in through the windows hurt his eyes. He closed the blinds.

The house was quiet around him. The door to the empty nursery yawned open, accusatory. 

He dialed in to his voicemail. The messages started off concerned, progressed to annoyed.

He got dressed without meeting his own gaze in the mirror. Went to pick up his daughter. 

"I'm sorry," he said, when the sitter opened the door. "I know I was meant to pick her up last night. There was a medical emergency at the clinic—"

He knew his unshaven face and red eyes branded him a liar. It would not take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the only emergency he'd tended was at the bottom of a bottle. 

"We won't be able to continue this arrangement, Dr Watson," she told him. "You'll need to find someone else." 

Rosie cooed and babbled at him, unaware that anything was amiss.

"I've got work today," he said. 

"Not my problem," she said. 

*

He went home. 

Mary was waiting for him in the kitchen, arms folded. 

He ducked his head away from her accusing stare. Prepared a bottle of formula for Rosie, who permitted his attention for a moment before snatching the bottle away and cradling it in uncoordinated hands. She grinned triumphantly at him. 

"Stubborn," he told her. He wanted to smile, but he was too tired. 

His stomach rumbled. He strapped Rosie into her highchair, watched her as she lifted the bottle and resumed drinking. When he was satisfied that she was not going to drop it, he turned away. 

He made himself toast and ate it dry, standing over the sink. Anything more felt like too much effort. 

"John," Mary said. 

"I don't need to hear it." 

"Apparently you do." 

"I fucked up," he said, pushing away from the counter. He went to the kitchen table, sat down. He'd sat at this very spot in the kitchen when he'd made the decision to text the pretty stranger on the bus. When he'd decided to cheat on his wife. "I forgot about Rosie. I'm failing her. I _know._ " 

"Then stop. Stop this." 

He shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, turned to look at Rosie. 

She dropped her half-empty bottle onto the tray of her highchair. It rolled and then stopped before reaching the edge, trailing a thin dribble of milk. She squealed, reached for it, pulled it back towards her mouth. Gummed at the nipple. 

"I don't know how anyone is meant to do this alone," he said. 

"You're not alone." 

He glanced sharply at Mary, but she shook her head. 

"Not me, John. I'm dead. Please try to remember that." 

"Believe me, I remember," he said. 

"You've got work," she said. "And your appointment. You need to keep your appointment. It's important." 

"There's no one to watch Rosie," he said. 

"You're not alone," Mary said again. 

He took his phone out of his pocket, looked at it. The minutes ticked by in silence.

When he looked back up, Mary was gone. 

Rosie dropped the bottle again. This time it rolled off the edge of the tray and clattered to the floor. She strained to reach it, tugging against the straps that held her in place. She began to cry. 

John watched the bottle roll across the floor, did not bend to pick it up. His head throbbed. He needed coffee. And a shower. And—Rosie. He needed to do something about Rosie. 

He looked at his phone again. The taste of bile was bitter in the back of his throat as he dialed. 

*

Molly was prompt. 

She stood at the door in a thick winter coat, a woolen cap pulled over her ears. She did not smile. 

"Sorry," he told her. "I'm sorry. I know—I know being stuck with babysitting duty twice in a row wasn't what you—"

"It's not babysitting," Molly said, pressing her lips together so hard they turned white. "I mean. _This_ is babysitting. But yesterday wasn't— not with—not with Sherlock. He's my friend."

She took a deep breath, stepped past him into the house. Began unbuttoning her coat with some force. 

"He's my friend, and he's going through a bad time," she said, not looking at him. "It's not babysitting. It's support. I'm— _we're—_ supposed to be there for him. Like I was for you. After." 

John winced, reached out an automatic hand to take her coat. 

"That wasn't babysitting either," she said. 

_Of course it was,_ he thought, but didn't say. She'd spent more time at his house than her own in the days immediately following Mary's death. She'd tended to Rosie, she'd wordlessly cleared away messes, she'd done laundry, she'd arranged meals. He'd done absolutely nothing to help, had wandered around numb and bewildered and furious. Insubstantial. A ghost in his own home.

"Thank you," he said cautiously. "I—I don't know that I've properly expressed—"

"You don't need to thank me," she said. "That's not—I didn't do it for thanks. I did it because. Because that's what friends do. And I'm Rosie's godmother, and I love her, and she needs—" Molly paused, bit her lip. "I mean, she _needed_ someone to—" 

She did not seem to know how to finish what she was trying to say. 

"Thank you," John said again, and the words felt wrong, all wrong. "Thank you for being here for me, I—" 

"I'm here for Rosie," she said, finally lifting her gaze to meet his. There was steel in her voice. "Not for you." 

*

"You were in the news recently," his therapist said, watching him carefully from her chair. "You and Sherlock Holmes." 

John sniffed, frowned. There was a faint odour of rot in the air, sickly sweet. Like she'd failed to empty the rubbish bin. 

"I'm—not—is it all right if we don't talk about that?" he said. He looked down at the rug, all vivid reds and uneven edges. It reminded him, uncomfortably, of the pool of blood in his dream. Sherlock's blood.

He thought of Culverton Smith and his favourite room. Sherlock, gasping and choking in his hospital bed. 

She tilted her head, looked at him. "You are free to speak about anything you choose." 

"Good," he said, pressing his palms against the tops of his thighs. "Yeah." 

"Is there a particular reason you are avoiding the subject of your friend?" 

He thought of Sherlock as he'd last seen him, sitting in his chair with the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows. Thought of his bloodied eye, the ugly black stitches marring the fair skin above his brow. Thought of the expression on his face as John had moved towards the door, pained and confused and achingly hopeful all at once. 

_Go to hell._

"You know what?" He stood up. Reached for his coat. "I don't think—I think I need to take a break. From this. From all of this." 

She started to speak. He ignored her, struggled into his coat as he hurried down the hallway towards the front door. 

"Wait," she said. 

"Sorry," he said without looking back. "I'll call. For another appointment. Some other time." 

He let the door fall shut behind him. She did not follow. 

*

He went back to work, spent the rest of the afternoon seeing patients who did not seem to mind his distracted demeanor. Or, if they minded, they did so quietly and without complaint. He found he did not much care which.

The nurse on staff was young and brunette and nothing at all like Mary.

That was fine. Mary stood just behind her, her back against the wall, her arms folded across her chest. 

"I'm not really here, John. I'm dead," Mary reminded him.

He ignored her. He had not yet slipped and spoken to her in public, and he would not do so today. The majority of the staff already tiptoed around him. He did not need to give them any more ammunition.

"Dr Watson?" the nurse—he'd not bothered to learn her name—held out a chart towards him. He took it. 

"You left your appointment," Mary said. "I don't think that was a very good idea." 

"You can send the next patient in," John said. 

The nurse nodded, ducked out through the door. She was timid, John thought. Mary had been a lot of things, but she'd never been timid. 

"Her name is April," Mary said. "And she's not timid, she's just nervous around you because you shouted at her last week." 

Ah, that was it. April. He remembered now. 

"You can't do things like that. And you shouldn't have left your appointment. You need to talk to someone, John, it's important." 

For a brief, terrible moment he thought of Sherlock. He wondered what Sherlock would say if he sat down across from him and announced that he was occasionally conversing with his dead wife. 

"You aren't, really," Mary said. "I'm in your head, John." 

"I know," he said. 

"You need to—" 

"Talk to someone," he said. He smiled tightly. "Mm. You've said, yeah." 

He'd talked plenty, he thought. He'd talked to Sherlock for months after he'd—

After. He'd talked to Sherlock for months, after. He'd never felt the need to share that fact with Ella, and Sherlock had not encouraged him to do so. In time, he'd just . . . faded away. That was what they did, the dead. They faded away. 

Well. Sherlock hadn't, not really. He'd come back. Except he'd _really_ come back, and so that didn't count. 

"Dr Watson?" 

April was in the doorway, the patient behind her. She was frowning at him, turning to follow his gaze to the empty space against the wall where Mary stood. 

"Yeah," John said. He offered a bland smile. They seemed to find the bland smiles reassuring. Less so when he showed too many teeth. "Come on in." 

April hung back, still looking at the wall. "Something wrong?" 

"No," he said. "Of course not." 

*

He was finished with patients by five-thirty.

He stripped off his latex gloves and binned them. Washed his hands. Listened to the indistinct chatter of his coworkers down the hall. 

Thought about Molly, waiting back at his house with Rosie. 

He swallowed, hard. 

He'd have to find a new sitter. It would be a bit of a struggle getting Rosie acclimated—she tended to be wary around strangers. And he'd have to find someone flexible, someone who understood the occasionally unpredictable nature of his work schedule.

His thoughts unspooled, stretching ahead. He saw himself researching sitters, interviewing, finding something suitable. Dropping Rosie off on his way to work, picking her up on his way home. Tedious, meaningless days at the surgery. Sleepless nights in his house, Mary watching him wordlessly from the shadows. 

All at once it was too much. 

He sagged, pressed his hands against the edge of the sink to catch his weight. He was tired. He was so very tired. 

_Go to hell._

"I'm sorry," he said out loud, his voice cracking. He pressed a trembling hand against his mouth. "Oh, fuck. I've gone and cocked it all up." 

"John," Mary said, voice low. She was standing very close, her hand on his shoulder. If he thought about it hard enough, he could almost feel it. "You haven't—you can still fix this. You can—"

A soft noise behind him, the shift of fabric.

John turned off the tap, took a moment to dry his hands. Turned around. 

Dr Reddy, one of the partners, stood in the doorway. She smiled at him, though it was a tight smile, pinched with concern. 

"All right, Dr Watson?" she asked. 

"Fine, yeah," he said. He cleared his throat.

"Good," she said. "Just wanted to let you know, we'll be having a cleaning crew come by on Tuesday to—" 

"Actually," John said. He frowned, looked down at the ground. 

Dr Reddy stopped talking. She folded her hands in front of her, studied him. The gesture reminded him, sharply and uncomfortably, of Sherlock. 

"I think—yeah," John said. He nodded, mind made up. "I can't do this anymore." 

"Dr Watson?" 

"I quit," he said. 

*

He wanted to walk, wanted to tug his coat closed and move until his muscles burned, until his cheeks were red and stinging from the icy January air. Until his thoughts were no longer so jagged and painful, until Mary no longer kept pace at his side. 

Instead, he went home.

Molly was on the sofa, Rosie on her knee, a book open across her lap. She looked up as John came in. 

"Oh," she said. She sounded surprised. He did not have it in him to wonder at her assumptions. 

Rosie flailed at the sight of him, her face crinkling up into a gummy smile. 

"Hi," he said. He took off his coat, bent to pick her up. She fussed at the touch of his cold hands, but nestled her head into the crook of his neck. 

Molly stood up, set the book on the coffee table. 

"She just had a bottle," Molly said. 

"Thanks," John said. 

She looked at him, then dropped her gaze. "I'll just—" 

"Molly," John said. 

She stopped. Waited. 

"I'm sorry," he said. He cleared his throat, shifted Rosie in his arms. "For—um. For this. For all of it, really."

Molly pressed her lips together. Nodded. 

"I've left my job," he said. "Wasn't planning on it. But. I think—I think I need to make some changes." 

"Okay," she said. 

"Be good to leave London, I think," he said, and he found it was not as difficult to say those words as he'd thought it might be. "Change of scenery for Rosie. Maybe we can—it's just—too many ghosts here, yeah?" 

"Leave London," Molly echoed. Her mouth tightened. She shook her head. "I—" 

"Thank you," John said. "For everything you've done. I know you don't want to—I know that's not what you want to hear from me. But it's—it's the best I can do, right now. So." 

"John," she said. She'd softened, slightly. Her eyes were damp. "Listen to me. Don't—" 

"Tell him I'm sorry, yeah?" John closed his eyes, pinched his nose. Breathed. Thought about Sherlock's face, bruised and open and searching. "If you could just—" 

"Tell him yourself," Molly said, and her voice had hardened again. 

He opened his eyes. There were tears on her cheeks. She stood, shoulders squared, stubbornly not wiping them away. 

"No more messages," Molly said. "I won't do that again. I won't." 

He nodded, looked down. In his arms, Rosie wriggled and strained, oblivious to his distress. 

_Go to hell._

"Yeah," he said. "All right. I—yeah." 

They regarded each other for a long moment. 

"Well," Molly said, when the silence had grown thick between them. She looked at the door. "Um." 

"Good night," he said. 

She paused to kiss Rosie on the cheek as she passed. He watched as she put on her coat, her hat, her gloves.

She closed the door softly behind her. Somehow, that was worse than a slam. 

*

In the morning, he called a realtor and put his house on the market. 

Rosie screamed in her nursery while he sipped a drink and boxed up Mary's things. He carefully folded her dresses, her shirts. 

This was the shirt she wore on the first day they'd met, he noted absently, the warm soft fabric slipping through his fingers. And this is the one she wore the day she put a hole in Sherlock's chest. There's the red turtleneck she favoured at Christmas time. 

Down the hall, Rosie wailed and wailed and wailed. 

When he'd finished, he went into the kitchen. Poured the remainder of his glass into the sink, watched the amber liquid circle down the drain. 

Mary leaned against the counter, said nothing. He felt her eyes on him. 

He went into the nursery, scooped Rosie up into his arms. She was flushed hot from screaming, and he bounced her on his hip until she calmed. 

"We can't stay here," he told her. " _I_ can't stay here." 

She snuffled against his neck, whimpered a little. He had no illusions that she understood his words, but she seemed to settle more, relaxing into his arms. 

He loved London. He always had. He did not know if it would help, leaving.

He thought about Baker Street. He'd felt like an interloper the last time, perched uncomfortably in his chair, muscles tensed, ready for fight or flight. Sherlock across from him, subdued and miserable and _wanting._

"Talk to him," Mary said. 

John glanced up. She had followed him into the nursery, stood leaning against the doorframe. 

"Tell him what you're planning," she said. "Tell him you're selling the house. Tell him you're—" 

"Why?" John asked. He smiled, a painful thing, with too many teeth. "Think he might offer me a flatshare? I think that ship has sailed, yeah?" 

_He needs you,_ Molly had said. 

But that, he thought, couldn't be farther from the truth.


	3. Chapter 3

*

A cacophony in the kitchen brought Sherlock out of his bedroom. 

Mrs Hudson stood at the counter, fussing noisily with two teacups. She turned as Sherlock came into the room. 

"Oh, Sherlock, glad you're up," she said, sweetly, as if she hadn't just been crashing about in the kitchen with the specific intent of driving him from his bed. "Would you mind—" 

He tuned her out, glanced into the sitting room. It was golden with morning sun. Molly and Lestrade had gone. 

"I'm fairly sure I would," he said, distracted. 

"What's that?"

"Mind," he said. 

Mrs Hudson made a huffing sound that was either a sign of genuine amusement or deep irritation. He often found it difficult to distinguish between the two. 

He went into the sitting room, perched at the edge of his chair. His chest felt curiously hollow. 

Across from him, John's chair stood empty, caught in a shaft of shifting sunlight. The fabric was comfortably faded and worn in all the places John had touched. 

"Mrs Hudson," Sherlock said. He swallowed, unable to tear his gaze away from the chair. "Fetch me my revolver." 

"That was confiscated, dear," she said. 

He exhaled in disgust, turned his attention to the mantel, to the knife driven into the much-abused wood. Thought about getting up and fetching it. Thought about stabbing it into the aged, sun-worn fabric of John's chair. Thought about ripping, thought about tearing, sawing the blade through the heavy upholstery, letting the stuffing spill out. Thought about driving his foot through the seat until the springs snapped free to lurk sharp and dangerous amidst the tattered remains. 

The fantasy was at once alluring and unsettling.

It was, he thought, what John had done to him. Sliced and sawed through his armor, turned him inside out, left him unzipped and exposed, raw and ruined. The pitiable, pathetic soft core of him spilled out for all the world to see. 

It wasn't John's fault, not really. It was his own. He'd seen his own disaster bearing down and had welcomed it, had not bothered to step out of the way.

And now John was gone. Really gone, this time. Not coming back. No more cases, no more takeaway and crap telly, no more _hanging out._ Gone.

He looked away from the knife and nestled back in his own chair, drew his knees up under his chin. 

Mrs Hudson came into the room with two cups of tea. She handed him one and sat down in John's chair without any hesitation. 

Sherlock let his feet drop back to the floor. 

It was all right, he thought, looking at her against the faded red fabric. She often sat there. She'd never treated it with any particular reverence.

Thinking of it as _John's chair_ was just sentimental drivel, anyway. It wasn't John's chair. It was just a chair. Just a chair that John used to sit in. That was all. 

It was good to see it occupied. 

He lifted his cup, sniffed at the tea. She'd not made it to his liking.

"I'm afraid I've completely run out of sugar," she said, eyeing him over the rim of her cup. 

He looked at her. There were dark circles under her eyes. She had not slept well.

"Sorry," he said, finally. He took a too-bitter mouthful. Swallowed. "I don't have any to spare." 

"No?" 

He thought of the baggie, the one she'd carefully concealed in his pants drawer, the one he'd cupped in a trembling and desperate hand. 

She was very good at appearing both doddering and unthreatening, when really she was neither. 

"No," he said. "I don't think I'll be needing any sugar. Not anymore." 

He almost meant it. 

*

John took Rosie to look at a two-bedroom flat in Chelmsford.

It was a bit cramped, he thought, but it would do. The walls were white and smelled of fresh paint. There was not a scrap of wallpaper in sight. 

"You're running away," Mary said.

"Like you did?" He smiled without any warmth, turned away from her.

"It's small," the realtor said. Her smile was pinched, a bit apologetic, perhaps in response to the look on his face. "But it's in your price range. There's good light in the bedrooms, and—" 

"Yeah," John said. "Yeah, all right. I'll take it." 

She faltered, looked down at her clipboard. He'd surprised her. "Er—are you sure you didn't want to discuss some other options first?" 

"I'll need to sign something, yeah? Can we do that now?" 

"Don't you at least want to see the—" she stopped, looked at him. "No, all right. How about we sit down in the kitchen. I have a copy of the lease right here." 

They sat in cheap folding chairs that had been set up against the wall in the tiny kitchen. The realtor took a folder out of her briefcase and set it on the table. 

Rosie squirmed in her stroller, made a discontented noise. John bent to unbuckle her, lifted her into his lap. She wriggled, reached a straining hand towards the papers on the table. 

"No, no," he said. "Don't do that." 

She grunted, reached for the papers again. He shifted her on his lap so she was facing in a different direction. 

"How old?" the realtor asked. 

"Eight months," he said. Rosie reached up and pinched his nose. 

"Ah," she said, and smiled. "My nephew's two. You should enjoy the calm while it lasts." 

"Calm?" he looked at her, a little incredulous.

She raised her brows. "At this age, she pretty much stays where you put her, yeah?" 

"More or less," he agreed. She was not crawling yet, though she seemed close to putting it all together.

"Well, once she gets her legs under her, it's all over." 

"Ah," he said. He looked down at Rosie in his lap. His mouth had gone dry. "I—um. Haven't been thinking that far ahead, really. Been focused on the day-to-day." 

"Living in the moment," the realtor said, smiling again. "That's sweet." 

_More like surviving the moment,_ he thought but did not say. Instead he shifted Rosie on his lap again, cleared his throat. "All set with the paperwork?" 

*

Sherlock was halfway through his third cigarette of the morning when he heard Mycroft's unmistakable tread on the stairs. 

His hand twitched, and he cursed the hesitation as he brought the cigarette to his lips. He did not lift his head from the sofa. 

"Really, Sherlock, hasn't this convalescence dragged on long enough?" 

Sherlock said nothing. He took another pull on the cigarette. 

An icy February rain beat relentlessly against the windows. The weather meant Mycroft would have had to use his ever-present umbrella. The thought was nearly enough to make Sherlock smile. Mycroft _hated_ opening his umbrella. 

On the other hand, Mycroft bothering to venture out in foul weather meant he considered his visit too important to put off. Which meant he was concerned, which meant he was about to either A) issue a lecture to Sherlock about proper behaviour, or B) attempt to recruit him into assisting the British government with some excruciatingly dull problem. 

"I'm told I was at death's door," Sherlock said. He slowly exhaled a ribbon of smoke. "Surely I'm entitled to a recovery period." 

"It's been more than a month," Mycroft said. "The stitches are out, the bruises have faded, and you've been issued a clean bill of health—" he paused, wrinkled his nose and waved his hand through the smoky air, "—somehow. Even your dedicated team of babysitters seem to have relaxed their vigil." 

Sherlock sat up, stabbing his cigarette against the coffee table to put it out. "Why are you here?" 

Mycroft favoured him with a thin smile. "Just checking in. Mummy is ever so worried." 

"A phone call would have sufficed." 

"You don't answer your phone." 

Sherlock stood, stepped over the coffee table, went to the window. Behind him, he heard Mycroft sigh. 

"Culverton Smith is dead," Mycroft said.

"Oh?" Sherlock kept his voice light. He stared out the window. The street below was blurred, indistinct. 

"It appears a fellow prisoner knew one of the victims. He saw an opportunity for revenge and took it." 

"Did he." 

"Mm," Mycroft said. 

"That's the story you're telling?" 

"It's the most palatable option for the general public, yes. Appearances must be maintained, after all." 

Sherlock turned around. Behind him, the rain went on droning against the window glass. "Well," he said. He clapped his hands together, gunshot loud. "That's that, then. Was there anything else?" 

"Sherlock." 

"One might wonder why I bothered with it all," Sherlock said. Something hot and angry burned at the back of his throat. He swallowed, hard. "The subterfuge, the investigation, the general unpleasantness of extracting his confession. Why, when I could have just asked you to have one of your pet assassins dispatch him for me? Suppose I'll keep the option open for the next serial killer I encounter. They _have_ been getting tedious these days, much as it pains me to say. Everyone wants to be clever about it—and, let's face it, they very rarely are." 

_"Sherlock."_

Sherlock hesitated, looked at him. He did not like what he saw in his brother's face.

"Well, you could hardly have come here expecting me to thank you," he said. 

"I'm not in the habit of utilising _pet assassins,_ " Mycroft said. He tapped the tip of his umbrella against the floor. "Not anymore." He paused, his expression troubled. "This was personal." 

Sherlock scoffed, looked away.

"I listened to the tape," Mycroft said. 

"Why? The police report contained everything you could have possibly needed to know." 

"Not everything." Mycroft's voice was soft, weary. 

Sherlock went to his chair. Sat down with what he hoped was an air of nonchalance. Thought about Smith's hand against his face, the smothering odour of latex as his nose was pinched shut. "Wanted to hear me beg for my life again? Didn't get enough of that in Serbia?" 

"I saved your life in Serbia." 

"Mm. Eventually." 

Mycroft pressed his lips together, looked up at the ceiling, the very picture of irritated restraint. There was an amusing predictability to his responses when frustrated. Sherlock often enjoyed provoking the reaction. If pushed further, Mycroft would take a threatening step forward, his hand tight on the handle of his umbrella. He'd never once swung it at him, though undoubtedly he'd imagined doing so. 

"Fine," Sherlock said, after a long silence had stretched. He let his head loll back against the headrest. "You listened to the tape. Satisfied your curiosity. Exacted your revenge. Blah, blah, blah." 

Sherlock had also listened to the recording. Once, and only once. 

He did not have any reason to want to relive the experience, to hear his own choked and frightened voice, the muffled sounds of his own near-murder. He did not want to revisit the moment where he'd lost faith, where he'd realised that he'd failed, that John was not coming for him. 

Because John _had_ come. In the end, he'd come. 

That was all that mattered, wasn't it? 

_Just in to say goodbye,_ John had said to the nurse when he left his cane behind. Sherlock had not been conscious at the time, and the sound of John's voice—clipped and unhappy and slightly muffled on the tape—had surprised him. 

It should not have surprised him. When he'd initially decided to go after Smith, he'd considered the variables very carefully. He'd planned for John. He'd planted the recorder in his cane. 

Granted, he'd been quite high at the time. 

Still, the entire miserable scenario had unfolded exactly as he'd expected it to, in the end. More or less.

_Just in to say goodbye._

John had not said anything else on the tape. If he'd said any goodbyes, if he'd made any speeches, if he'd issued any parting words at all, he had done so silently. 

And then there had been Smith, gleefully whispering in Sherlock's ear while he slowly cut off his air supply. And Sherlock had been confident, he _had,_ he'd set it all up perfectly, and all John had to do was walk through the door. 

Sherlock blinked away the memory. Mycroft was staring at him. There was something uncomfortably close to pity in his eyes.

Mycroft, he realised, would have heard all of it. He'd have noted the exact moment that Sherlock realised John was not coming for him, that John was not going to save him. He'd heard Sherlock's failure, there in the symphony of muffled grunts, in the huff of Smith's laughter, in the broken rasp of his last breaths. 

It didn't _matter._

His loss of faith had been premature. His confidence had wavered, that was all. John _had_ come. 

It was fine. 

Well—it wasn't fine. But it was enough.

"I don't want to die," Mycroft said. He spoke slowly, drawing out the words, his gaze never once leaving Sherlock's face. 

Sherlock swallowed, looked away. It was bad enough that all of Scotland Yard had heard the recording. They were idiots, the lot of them, even the ones he liked. They could easily be led to believe that his weakness, his desperation had all been an act. 

But Mycroft would have known the truth from his first gasped breath. And his last. 

"No need to relive the greatest hits," he said, keeping his tone mild, a little bored. "I assure you there's nothing wrong with my memory."

Mycroft sighed. It was a quiet, private sound. "I have failed you terribly." 

"Ah, you admit it at last," Sherlock said breezily. Then he frowned, sat up straight. "What do you mean? What are you talking about?" 

"Do you remember Redbeard?" 

"Why are we talking about this?" 

"No reason," Mycroft said. He smiled again, but it was a weak smile. For a moment it looked like he wanted to say more. Then he turned, went to the door. 

Sherlock listened for his tread on the stairs, but it did not come. 

After a moment, Mycroft reappeared in the doorway. He withdrew leather gloves from his coat pockets, pulled them on slowly. He did not make eye contact. 

"Was it really worth all this, in the end?" he asked.

"Was what worth it?" Sherlock frowned.

"Friendship." 

Sherlock swallowed. Across from him, John's chair sat empty. 

Silence stretched between them. 

"Take care, brother," Mycroft said. He turned, went back through the door. The stairs creaked as he descended.

*

"You've recently relocated." 

The therapist's name was Edward, and he was young—perhaps mid-thirties. Male. John had chosen him deliberately. 

_You can't predict everything, Sherlock,_ he'd thought at the time. 

The room was comfortable, if a bit impersonal. The wall colour was a muted beige, the furniture in varied shades of dark brown. There was a landscape painting hung up over Edward's desk. The work was at once competent and entirely uninspiring.

Mary leaned against the desk, her arms folded. 

"Are you going to tell this one about me?" she asked.

"Yes," John said, and he folded his hands in his lap and tried to look like a reasonable person. He carefully ignored Mary, focused on the man sitting across from him. "From London. Just last month." 

"What drew you here? Family? Work?" Edward prompted. 

John pursed his lips, considered. 

He thought about Sherlock, about dark stitches and bruised skin and searching eyes, about blood on the floor of Culverton Smith's favourite room. Thought about Mary, gasping her last breaths on the ground. She had died jetlagged and tired. She had died believing him to be a good person. 

He shied away, thought instead about the house he'd left behind in London. Thought about his new flat (too small, too dark, too bland). It was less expensive, living in Chelmsford. His army pension covered the rent. The sale of the house left him with a comfortable balance in his bank account. 

He'd need to seek employment eventually, if only to keep from going mad with boredom, but he could find something part-time or even return to locum work. That had worked out well, back when he'd still lived with Sherlock. And living with an infant was not so different, really, when it came down to it. 

Sherlock's eye, red and bloodied. The look on his face. _I thought we were just hanging out._

Sherlock was the genius, and yet sometimes he looked at John as if _John_ were the one with all the answers. He did not know what to do with that.

_Go to hell._

Mary had believed him to be a good person. Mary had sent Sherlock down a path believing that John would act a certain way, and instead he'd—he'd— 

Sherlock, on the floor in the morgue. Not fighting back. Sherlock, frail and helpless in a hospital bed, Smith looming over him. Killing him. 

It shouldn't matter. Sherlock was alive. Smith was dead, some kind of prison accident. It had been in all the papers. The news had stopped John cold when he'd first heard it. 

_I might even move him to my favourite room._

John had almost reached out, had almost sent a text. He'd had his phone in his hand, had Sherlock's name pulled up in his contacts before he'd even thought about it. 

And then he'd stopped, because what was there to say? He hadn't known what to say that last day at Baker Street, and he didn't know what to say now. There had been things, he knew. Things he'd wanted to say. Things he'd assumed he'd get to, eventually. But he'd put it off. And a day had turned into a week which turned into a month which turned into two. He'd left London behind. He'd left _Sherlock_ behind. There was no place left for him in that world. 

No reason to reach out, now. His text would most likely sit unread and unanswered, and it would be exactly what he deserved. 

_Go to hell._

"A clean slate," John said, finally, aware that far too much time had passed. He rubbed at the back of his neck, then let his hand fall back into his lap. Offered a bland smile. 

Mary huffed and pushed away from the desk. He managed to keep his eyes from tracking her movements, but only just. 

"Yet you say you grew up in Chelmsford?" Edward asked. He took off his glasses, massaged the bridge of his nose. 

"Hm? Yeah. Yes." John shifted in his seat, frowned. "Why?" 

"Only—generally when people talk about a clean slate, they are using the term to describe moving forward. Not necessarily going back." 

John clenched his hand, looked away. 

When his hour was up, he did not book a second appointment.

*

Sherlock followed the swirl of red and blue lights to an alleyway, neatly sidestepped the police tape. No one made any effort to stop him.

Lestrade was crouched next to a skip, frowning over a corpse on the ground.

Sherlock only tended to frown over corpses if they were boring (or people he knew—no—delete— _delete_ ). 

This one, at first glance, was not boring. 

(Well, perhaps a bit boring. But certainly not as boring as his empty flat with its empty rooms and its empty chairs. There were plenty of dust motes swirling in the air and dust was eloquent, but it seemed the dust in his rooms had very little to say and he'd grown terribly sick of all the quiet.) 

In any case. The corpse: 

Male, late twenties, clad head-to-toe in colour-coordinated workout attire. Grit in the meat of his palms—he'd stumbled forward while fleeing and had tried to break his fall. A drying bloom of blood at his temple—hit his head on the skip on his way down. That had given the killer ample opportunity to bury a knife in his back. 

The knife was still there, protruding grotesquely between the victim's shoulder blades. It was a large knife, with a carved wooden handle. A chef's knife, if he was not mistaken (and he rarely was). An unusual choice for an alleyway murder. 

The drying bloodstain clashed with the neon colours of the dead man's pricey moisture-wicking t-shirt. 

Not a mugging—joggers rarely carried valuables, and the man's shoes and watch were untouched. Not premeditated—the killer had made no effort to hide the body or dispose of the murder weapon. 

Panic. The killer had stabbed and fled. 

But why? 

Sherlock swept his gaze along the ground, then glanced up at the darkened windows overlooking the alley. He felt a pull at the corner of his mouth, a smile that badly wanted to make itself known. He flattened it into submission. 

He'd missed this. He had.

He turned his head, just slightly, glancing to his right, seeking to catch John's eye. Stopped. 

_( ~~six 'til ten~~ )_

There would be no shared smiles in the darkness. Not anymore. 

"I'd stop wasting your time on him, if I were you," he said. "He's not going to tell you anything you need to know." 

Lestrade startled badly, almost toppling forward onto the dead man. He swung the torch he was holding so that the beam flared into Sherlock's face, then stood up, put his hands on his knees. 

"Jesus, Sherlock, I didn't even—" he breathed out, hard. "Give me some warning next time, yeah?" 

Sherlock tipped his head to the side, waited as Lestrade eyed him in the torchlight. There was poorly disguised concern in his expression, in the way his gaze lingered first on Sherlock's face, then swept him up and down. 

There was nothing to see. Sherlock was bundled up tight in his greatcoat, scarf wound carefully around his neck. Still, he bristled at the invasion.

"When you're done wasting time," Sherlock said, glancing meaningfully towards the corpse. "Perhaps you'd like to know why this man had to die." 

"It's good to see you," Lestrade said. He reached out, as if to clap Sherlock on the shoulder, then seemed to think better of it and froze with his hand halfway extended.

Sherlock blinked at him. 

Lestrade shook his head, smiled. He took a step forward, went ahead with clapping Sherlock on the shoulder. It was a hearty thump, a far more robust greeting than the situation called for. 

"You all right?" Lestrade asked, stepping back. His attention was still irritatingly on Sherlock and not on the crime scene.

"Why wouldn't I be?" 

"No reason," Lestrade said, still smiling. He gestured back towards the crumpled body. "Surprised this one interests you—our best guess right now is a mugging gone bad." 

"Wrong," Sherlock said. 

Lestrade leaned back on his heels, looked between the corpse and Sherlock. Infuriatingly, he did not stop smiling. 

"Not a mugging. Nothing's been stolen—those sneakers cost a hundred quid at least and they've not been touched. He's still wearing his watch." 

"Well," Lestrade said. "That's where the _gone bad_ part comes in, but—" 

"No," Sherlock said, reaching out to pluck the torch from Lestrade's hand. He aimed the beam up at the darkened windows overhead, illuminating an open window. A wispy curtain fluttered in the light breeze.

"That's—" Lestrade said.

"Bad timing," Sherlock said. "The victim came through the alleyway—this is a fairly secluded area, I suspect he cut through here as a shortcut home after completing his workout, you'll be able to confirm once you've discovered his address—and surprised his killer emerging from the flat above. The killer panicked, stabbed him and ran. Didn't even bother to take the knife." 

"Seems a bit of an overreaction to being caught housebreaking, yeah?" 

"Perhaps," Sherlock said. "Or, more likely, you and your team failed to take into account a key piece of evidence." 

Lestrade sighed. "What evidence?"

"The knife."

"What about it?" 

"Why would a man breaking into a flat be carrying a large kitchen knife?" 

"Protection?" 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Look at it. It's a chef's knife. An expensive one, at that. No one would carry that around for a bit of housebreaking." 

"Sherlock," Lestrade said, shifting a bit where he stood. "I'm not entirely sure where you're going with this." 

"He wasn't breaking into a flat with a knife, he was fleeing the scene of a murder _with the murder weapon._ In this case, a knife he picked up from the victim's kitchen." 

"So that—" Lestrade looked back towards the corpse. 

"Bad timing, as I said," Sherlock said. He shrugged. "The killer couldn't risk being recognised and tied to the murder he'd just committed, hence the—" he mimed stabbing, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary. 

"You're telling me there's another dead body up there," Lestrade said. He did not look particularly enthusiastic to receive the news.

"Almost certainly," Sherlock agreed. 

"Well—shit," Lestrade said. He turned towards the entrance to the alleyway, where several coppers were milling around, their faces briefly illuminated by the flashing lights. "Oi—Gregson! Donovan! Get someone up to check out those flats!" 

Sherlock watched them go. Donovan glanced at him as she hurried past, but did not say a word. 

He slipped his hands into his pockets, tucked his chin into the folds of his scarf. He missed John at his side. He missed him terribly.

He drew in a sharp breath, banished the thought. He'd worked alone before. He'd simply have to relearn how, that was all. 

Lestrade sighed, ran a hand through his hair. "I think I'm about done here. If you're right, they're going to need me upstairs in a few minutes." 

" _If_ I'm right?" Sherlock raised his brows. He waited for John's muffled snort of amusement, or perhaps a gentle nudge against his arm admonishing him to play nice. Nothing came. Of course, nothing came. 

Lestrade looked at him, shook his head. In the shifting blue and red light his expression was almost fond.  
"Yeah, well, nobody's perfect. But you might as well come along." 

Sherlock blinked at him. 

Lestrade inclined his head towards the row of darkened windows. "Up to the flat. We're only going to wind up calling you in on this later, so let's save some time, yeah?" 

"What happened to _if I'm right?_ " 

Lestrade shrugged. "We both know you probably are." 

"Flattery, Lestrade?" 

Lestrade shrugged again, looked away. The gesture seemed practiced, a forced attempt at nonchalance. 

Trickery, manipulation. He was being goaded. 

It should bother him. It was the sort of thing he resented, after all. Being managed, being handled. What had Mycroft called them? His _dedicated team of babysitters._

"Flattery's the last thing you need," Lestrade said. "You're arrogant enough as it is." 

Sherlock glanced sharply at him, surprised. Lestrade had been terribly gentle with him in the past months. 

"Better arrogance than incompetence," he said. His voice almost sounded like his own. 

"Yeah, all right," Lestrade said. "Then come show us how it's done." 

He went.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, friends. Sorry for the longer-than-expected delay between chapters. Quarantine has been kicking my ass a bit, but I'm finally starting to feel creative again. 
> 
> Hope you're all doing well! 
> 
> My eternal thanks to [verdant_fire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdant_fire) for the beta.

*

The surgery in Chelmsford that hired John on was not much different from the one he'd left behind in London.

They'd only been able to offer locum work, but it was a busy practice and he frequently found shifts to cover. One of the other physicians had a small child, and had recommended a reliable sitter. Rosie seemed to find her agreeable. He'd ignored the small pang of guilt that came from wondering if Rosie was _too_ agreeable, if he'd done irreparable damage to their bond. 

He worked the occasional weekend, covered for planned holidays and leaves of absence. He treated coughs and sniffles and indigestion, the occasional sprain or fracture. There were no surprises, and no late nights. 

No one knew him, there. It was good. There were no awkward, pitying looks from coworkers who had known and cared for Mary. No one eyeing him suspiciously when his mobile beeped with a text alert, certain that he'd be about to beg off a shift to chase after Sherlock. 

He picked up his phone, looked at it. The only recent calls and text messages in his history were work-related. This was not a surprise to him. He kept checking, regardless. 

"Speaking of Sherlock," Mary said. She was standing near the wall in the little office space he'd claimed, inspecting the white coat he'd hung up on a coat hook. "You could reach out, you know. Send a text. It's been months." 

He set the phone down. Looked at the stack of patient charts on his desk. "Hm? Yeah. I'll—I'll text him. When I get a chance. Bit busy now." 

"John," she said. 

He smiled tightly, did not look up. "Doubt he'd want to hear from me." 

"You won't know until you try." 

The thing of it was, he thought, he didn't actually want to know. 

"I'm sure he's busy," he said. 

"You're sure who's busy?" 

He glanced up sharply. Lucy, the assistant, stood in the doorway, regarding him with a curious expression. 

"No one," John said, resisting the urge to look towards Mary. "Just—talking to myself. Sorry. Did you want something?" 

She snapped her gum. She was always snapping gum. It drove the partners mad, but none of them had spoken to her about it. John did not particularly mind either way. 

"You're a single dad," she said. 

He cleared his throat, looked down at his left hand. "Yes. Well. Widowed." 

"My cousin Gemma's a single mum." 

"Oh," he said, when it became apparent he was expected to respond.

"Her son's seven." 

"Oh," he said again. He clenched his hand, looked at the photograph of Rosie that he kept on his desk. It was old, now. It would need to be replaced. She was growing very fast. "Rosie—my daughter—is just over ten months." 

Lucy snapped her gum. She was still studying him. "I could give you her number," she said, finally. "If you want. I think you'd get on." 

He looked at his phone. Swallowed. Shook his head. 

Mary had gone conspicuously silent.

"No," he said. "No, thank you. I—erm—" 

"Still devoted," Lucy said, looking at his hand, at the gold ring he still wore. She smiled faintly. "That's sweet." 

He followed her gaze, ran the tip of his index finger along the band. Thought about the times he'd sat up, listening to the faint sounds Mary made in the other room with Rosie. Twisting the band around and around, sliding it up over his knuckle, thinking about how easy it might be to slip it off. And next to him, on the nightstand, his phone lighting up with incoming texts. 

"No," he said, after far too much time had passed. "It's not— I'm just—" 

But she had already gone. 

*

Sherlock let the door slam behind him. He stripped out of his rain-damp coat, hung it on the hook in the hall. His suit jacket had largely been spared, but his hair was a sodden mess. 

"Oh, Sherlock—" Mrs Hudson poked her head out into the hall. She'd quite obviously been waiting near the door for some time. 

"Hm?" 

"The state of you! Were you caught in that downpour?" she frowned at him, coming closer.

"Clearly," he said. He looked at her. "Well? What is it?" 

"What's what, dear?" 

"You've obviously been waiting for me to return home, the front door had barely closed before you opened yours." 

"Are you all right?"

He blinked, caught off guard. "Yes," he said, because other than being cold and a bit soggy he was none the worse for wear. Though he suspected that was not, entirely, what she meant. 

"You should go upstairs and get yourself warm. I'll put on some tea," she said. 

He glanced towards the stairs, then back at her, immediately suspicious. "What is it? What aren't you telling me?" 

The brass door knocker had been askew, after all. It wasn't as if Mycroft was lurking about upstairs. And even if he was, it would be very unlike Mrs Hudson to conspire with him. 

"Well. Molly Hooper was here," she said. "About an hour ago. Said she left something in the fridge for you." 

"Ah," Sherlock said, pleased. He took the stairs two at a time. A creak below told him that Mrs Hudson had elected to follow, albeit at a more measured pace. 

He went into the flat, looked around. Nothing had been disturbed. Molly had not lingered long. The kitchen was still messy, dishes still in the sink. She'd not felt the need to tidy up. 

She differed from John in that way. John would not have been able to help himself. 

There was a yellow Post-it on the fridge, a cheerful smiling face. He yanked open the door. 

On the top shelf was a bag containing three diseased livers. 

"Excellent," he said. It was just as he'd hoped. 

"Did she bake you something nice, then, Sherlock?" Mrs Hudson piped up behind him, peering over his shoulder. "Oh. Oh _dear._ " She recoiled, face crinkled up in dismay. 

"Molly doesn't bake," Sherlock said, crouching down to examine the bag. "She hasn't the patience for it." 

"Did she tell you that?" 

He scoffed, not looking away from the livers. "She didn't need to tell me that. It's painfully obvious if you know what to look for." 

"I'd been hoping for biscuits," Mrs Hudson said mournfully. "Or maybe some scones." 

"Boring," Sherlock said. "You can get those at any corner shop. But these—" he smiled, a brief curl of his lips. "Much more difficult to come by." 

He picked up the bag, intending to move it to one of the drawers so that it wouldn't upset John when he— 

He stopped. Swallowed. 

"Home-baked is much better than the ones you can get at—" 

"Mrs Hudson, enough about the scones," he said. His voice wavered, just slightly. 

"Well," she said. She sighed. "I can't say that I relate. But if those kidneys—" 

"Livers." 

"—if those livers are what it takes to make you happy, then so be it. Just don't leave them out on the kitchen table, I'll not have them stinking up the place." 

She patted him on the arm, turned away. He listened to her footsteps as she left the flat, carefully descended the stairs. Then he returned his attention to the fridge. 

He left the bag on the top shelf. 

*

Blue, all around. The gurgle of water, bright flashes of colour as fish swam in lazy arcs through the depths. 

His footsteps echoed as he hurried down the hall. It stretched before him, dim and empty and serpentine. There were no families crowding the path, no children with eager curious faces pressed against the glass. 

The gunshot stopped him cold. He put his hands on his knees. 

"Jesus," he said, and then he was running, his chest burning and the taste of copper at the back of his throat. 

He came around the bend and there they were. There _she_ was. 

Blood on a grey t-shirt. Too much blood, too fast. It was a fatal wound, he knew it at first sight. There was nothing to be done, anything he attempted would be for his own comfort and not hers. 

Ice seeping through his veins. Dull shock. Mary, speaking to him. Bleeding. He hadn't tried hard enough. He hadn't—he should have— 

Movement behind him, a rustle of clothing. Sherlock.

He was supposed to— 

John hadn't worried. Mary had gone off and he'd followed and he hadn't worried, because she'd been with Sherlock, and Sherlock was _Sherlock,_ and Sherlock could work miracles—

And now she— 

_No, no, no, no, no._

Mary was dead, she had held his gaze and said _you were my whole world_ and only an hour ago they had been on the sofa in the little house they shared and he'd been trying to find the words to tell her it was over. 

Sherlock, creeping closer. 

He snapped his head up, furious, aching, because Mary was _dead_ and she wasn't supposed to be dead and—

—and then he was reeling, lurching backwards as Mary slumped limp and lifeless from his arms. Because Sherlock stared down at him with sightless eyes, blood running in rivulets down his pale slack face, his hair dark and wet where his skull had split. There was blood on his coat, his collar sodden with it. 

"Sh—" John said, but there was no point, Sherlock was dead, still standing through some grotesque trick of physics, Sherlock had cracked his brilliant head open against the pavement and there was no walking away from something like that. Sherlock was dead, and Mary was dead, they were all dead and he was alone and adrift under the shifting blue lights. 

He looked away, unable to bear the sight of it. 

Mary was still crumpled at his feet. Except it wasn't Mary any longer. It was Evan Bell, Evan Bell with eyes as faded blue as the Afghan sky he'd died under. And how the hell had Evan Bell found his way here, to the London Aquarium, when he'd been dead for years and years and years? 

"You said it would be fine," Evan said. He looked sad. 

It wasn't right. Evan Bell was dead, and Sherlock was dead and Mary— _where_ was Mary— 

_You were my whole world._

John opened his eyes. 

He'd left the curtains open, and a full moon hung heavy and bright in the sky. He stared at it for a moment, sweat cooling on his skin, his hands clenched at his sides.

"Christ," he said, and lifted his hands to his eyes. His cheeks were wet. 

He had to thrash a bit to untangle the blankets as he sat up, breathing hard. The sheets were cold, damp with sweat. 

There was a furtive movement in the corner of the room and John snapped his head up, squinted through the gloom. Moonlight glinted off of unkempt sandy hair and he winced, looked away. When he looked back, Evan Bell was still there. 

"Why is this happening?" his voice cracked a bit, too loud in the darkness. 

He had not seen Evan Bell in years. Hadn't even thought of him. Not since— 

_You're not my first ghost._

He shut his eyes, breathed in through his nose. When he opened his eyes, the figure in the corner of the room was still there, but it had taken on a more familiar form. 

"John," Mary said. Her voice was sad. 

"I'm trying to sleep," he said, without any real heat. "Leave me alone." 

"I'm not really here," she said. 

"I know that," he said, looking away. "Don't you think I know that?" 

She was quiet for a long time. Long enough for him to think she'd gone. But when he turned back, she was still leaning against the wall, muted and monochrome in the shadows. 

John threw back the sheets, stood up. The night air was cold against his flushed and sweaty skin. He went through the door and down the hall into the kitchen. The flat was very quiet. 

He took a glass down from the cabinet. There was a bottle of scotch under the sink, unopened. He opened it now without hesitation, poured himself a generous glass. His hand shook as he lifted it to his lips. 

"This is how you cope with death. This is what you do," Mary's voice, behind him. "You're doing it with me. You did it with Sherlock. You—" 

"I was around death in Afghanistan. I saw men die. Good men. Friends. I didn't—" He swallowed. The liquor was cheap, the taste unpleasant. "I didn't see any of them after." 

"Only the one you felt guilty about." 

He sucked in a breath. It had been years since Evan Bell had even crossed his mind, years and years, and suddenly it was an onslaught. He thought of him as he'd last seen him, stiff and bloodless, and shuddered.

His fault. All his fault. 

"I don't want to talk about this." 

"Obviously you do," Mary said. She pronounced _obvious_ the way that Sherlock might have said it, complete with an impatient roll of her eyes. 

"No," John said. 

"Why do you feel guilty?" 

"Oh, so you're a therapist now, yeah? Got an hourly rate?"

"You know I'm not really here." 

"Then why all of this?" 

"Because there's a part of you that still hopes to make it through this." 

He shook his head. Gripped his drink. 

"I'm in your head, John. I'm here because you want me to be." 

"No," he said, and shut his eyes. He did not need to see her face to know that she saw through the lie. 

"Why do you feel guilty?" she asked again. 

"I was too late," he said. 

The words fell between them. He set his drink on the counter, his hand curled loosely around the glass. Listened to the sound of his own breathing. 

"No," she said softly. 

He smiled, a painful and angry twist of his lips, looked up at the ceiling. "You really want to do this?" 

"Clearly you do," she said. And then, softer, yet still insistent, "Why do you feel guilty?" 

"Take your pick," he barked, lifting his drink and throwing it back, a too-big mouthful that burned terribly on its way down. "You'd left, and I went after you. I went after you and brought you back just to die." 

"John—" 

"I went and brought you back, and I didn't even want—" he cut himself off, stared hard at his empty glass. His hand shook. 

"What is it that you didn't want, John?" Mary's voice was quiet. 

He lifted his head, looked at her. Thought about all of the nights that he'd had with her, lying next to her in bed, thinking of someone else. Texting someone else. His little flirtation. It had been so easy, he'd thought. So uncomplicated. Late-night messages, smiling at the thought of the pretty girl on the other end of the line. And when guilt had reared its ugly head, when he'd thought of the vows he'd made and the woman he'd pledged his life to, he'd viciously brushed it aside. _She lied too. She hurt me first._

"I don't know," he lied, and looked away. 

She sighed, the sound supremely unimpressed. 

"I didn't want you to come back," he said through his teeth. "Is that what you wanted to hear me say?"

"Then why did you come after me?" 

"I was—" he breathed out hard. "I was angry. I—I _am_ angry. I didn't want you to come back, I wanted you to have never left at all. I wanted—I don't know. I don't know what I wanted." 

She waited, her hands clasped in front of her. 

"I wanted you to be someone you weren't," he said. "You know, I—I married someone who was clever and funny and warm and b—" his voice cracked, "—beautiful." 

She smiled at him. It was a sad smile. 

He sucked in a breath of air, soldiered on. "But someone who would always, _always_ choose herself in a crisis." 

She said nothing. Waited.

"You'd run. You'd run or you—you'd shoot. But." He stopped, shook his head. "I don't know why you didn't. That night. I don't know why you chose to die for him instead of—"

She watched him silently. 

He could put words in her mouth, he knew. He could make her give voice to any of the things that had been rattling around in his head since it had happened, since she'd died bloody and gasping in his arms. 

_I never loved you._

_I loved him more._

_I was tired of living this life._

_It was always going to catch up to me._

_I didn't think, I just reacted._

_Your fault for coming after me._

He could make her say whatever he wanted. He could make her soothe him. He could make her hurt him. Whatever he needed her to say, he could hear it. 

But he'd never know the truth. 

"I cheated on you," he said, instead. He looked down at his empty glass, unable to face her. "There was a woman on the bus. She—she smiled at me. That's all it took."

Mary said nothing. She watched him with somber eyes. 

"We texted constantly," he said. "You never noticed. We—any time you left the room. In the middle of the night. You'd be taking care of our daughter, and I'd—I'd—"

John cut himself off, shook his head. He set his glass in the sink with a trembling hand. 

"It was only texting," he said. "We didn't—it didn't go any further than that. But I wanted it to." 

"John," Mary said.

"No," he said, and turned around. "I wanted more. I would have, you know. Eventually. I wanted—but then you left, you ran off, and—" he let out a growl of frustration, took the empty glass back out of the sink, refilled it. He lifted the glass to his lips but did not drink. "When we—" his breath caught on _we_ and he hesitated, breathed out hard through his nose. "When we caught up to you, when I saw you again, I was so—I just wanted—" 

"You were angry with me," Mary said. Her voice was very calm. She was almost smiling, he thought, although it might have been a trick of the light.

"I didn't see her while you were gone," John said. The lino was cold beneath his bare feet and he shivered. "I didn't answer her texts. I could have. God knows I was angry enough. I could have gone through with it. But I was with Sherlock, and I—she—she didn't even cross my mind." 

"Yes, well, that's hardly surprising," Mary said, and she _was_ smiling. It was a sad sort of smile, but no less genuine for it. 

He shook his head, because that was something he was not ready to think about. Something he doubted he'd ever be ready to think about. Not anymore, not after everything that had happened. 

"You wanted to know why I felt guilty, yeah?" he said, and he took a swallow of scotch, then another. Set the half-empty glass back down on the counter. "I went halfway around the world to bring you home, Mary, and I was going to tell you it was over." 

She did not look particularly shocked by this. Just went on watching him in the darkness. 

"I was going to leave you," he said. "I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't—every time I was with you, I wanted to be somewhere else. With someone else." 

_You were my whole world._

"I didn't want you to die," he said. "I loved you." 

"I know," she said. 

"But I—I wanted more." 

"I know," she said again. 

His eyes burned. He braced himself against the counter, pressed his hand to his face. Breathed. He could not recall the last time he had felt so utterly, miserably alone. 

Mary had died in his arms, and he'd held her and watched the light leave her eyes while he'd choked on every terrible thought he'd ever had about her.

His fault. 

"I'm not the person you thought I was," he said. "I want—I _want_ to be, but—" 

Sherlock's face, sad and expectant. 

_I might even put him in my favourite room._

He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut. 

"John," Mary said. Her voice was very close, the hint of her breath tickling his ear. 

He opened his eyes. She had crossed the small room to stand near to him, close enough to touch. He lifted his hand, brought it towards her face. Cupped his palm where her cheek would be, pretended he could feel her skin.

"John Watson," she said, and her face cracked into a smile. "Get the hell on with it." 

"I don't know how," he admitted.

She turned her head to look around the room. She shrugged, the motion unconcerned. "Oh, I'm sure you'll figure it out." 

He laughed without humour, turned away from her to pick up his half-empty glass. He tipped it into the sink, ran the tap to wash away the scent.

When he turned back, she was gone. 

The quiet stillness she left behind felt permanent.

He shut his eyes for a moment, breathed in through his nose to steady himself. She had, he knew, never really been there at all. It did not make the loss sting any less. 

When he opened his eyes he picked his way down the hall towards Rosie's room. 

Her cot was limned in moonlight. She was standing up, peering over the top, her little hands gripping the bars for balance. 

"Oh," he said. He swallowed hard against a sudden lump in his throat. 

_Once she gets her legs under her, it's all over._

She grinned when she saw him, let out a happy little squeal. In her enthusiasm she overbalanced, sat down hard on her rear. 

"Shh," he said, but he could not stop a smile from spreading across his face. He went to her, picked her up, cradled her against his chest. She was warm and solid. "How long have you been keeping that little trick a secret, hm?" 

Rosie burbled happily, nuzzled against his neck. 

She loved him. She trusted him. In spite of everything, in spite of the long cold months after Mary's death where she'd been little more than an inconvenience, an afterthought. 

He'd let down everyone in his life that he'd ever claimed to love. And yet— 

_You'll figure it out._

He supposed he would have to. 

*

"Check the stomach contents." 

Molly ignored him. Her shoulders were tense as she bent over the corpse. She seemed, irritatingly, more fixated on the dead man's chest and throat area. 

"The stomach." 

She did not react. He watched for a moment as she made an incision, her hand steady and careful and very, very slow. Perhaps she hadn't heard him. 

He stood up. 

"Sherlock," Molly said without turning around. "Sit _down._ "

He rolled his eyes, sat. 

Molly had (with what seemed to be unnecessary reluctance) agreed to allow him to sit in on autopsies, provided he remained on a metal stool in the far corner of the room and did not talk too much. Which was a ridiculous directive, because how could he possibly talk too _much?_ He spoke when necessary. 

Like pointing out that the previous two victims had both eaten the same thing prior to death. He suspected this would be more of the same, which was why he found himself wishing that Molly would skip ahead to the important bits. 

"You don't have to sit there," she said. 

He perked up, moved to stand. 

"No," she said hastily. "I mean. If you're here, you have to sit there. But you don't have to be here. I could just call when it's done. Or, um. Text." 

"More expedient this way," Sherlock said, though that was hardly true. 

Baker Street was very quiet. He found it all rather distracting, that silence. It got in his way, made him think about things he shouldn't. And there were only so many times he could poke through the contents of Mrs Hudson's fridge before she grew suspicious. 

"Is the stomach—?" 

"Sherlock," Molly said, her voice tight. "I'll get to the stomach." 

He sighed, settled back down on the stool. 

Since the corpse would offer nothing of interest until Molly got to the stomach, he focused his attention on her instead. 

She was wearing lipstick. She'd taken more care with her eye makeup than usual. The shirt peeking out from underneath her lab coat was new. She was smiling more frequently lately, though—he couldn't help but notice—not at him. 

"Been seeing each other long?" he asked casually, and was gratified when she hesitated. 

"Um," she said. 

"I hope he's not a criminal mastermind this time," he added. 

She sighed heavily. 

He shifted restlessly on the stool where he sat. Surely it couldn't possibly take this long to reach the stomach. She must be drawing it out on purpose just to torment him. 

"Might want to hold off on any hasty engagements," he persisted. "They rarely work." 

_"Sherlock."_

He offered his most innocent expression. "I'm only pointing out—" 

"I'm doing the stomach now, all right?" she snapped. 

"Ah. Excellent," he sat back. Watched as she made an incision. 

"Not very long," she said, after a time. 

He glanced up. "Hm?" 

"We haven't been together long. But it's—nice. It's been nice." 

He was not quite sure what he was expected to say to that. He glanced helplessly towards the corpse. 

"Should probably have happened a long time ago," she said. "But. Um. I suppose sometimes you don't notice things that are right in front of you for so long—" 

He rolled his eyes, sighed. "The stomach, Molly?"

"Oh," she said. She looked down. "Pasta." 

"Just like the others." His phone buzzed in his pocket and he fished it out, frowned down at it. 

"Yeah, just like the others—" Molly must have seen something on his face, because her voice trailed off. "What is it?" 

"There's been another," he said without looking up. 

He stood, put his phone back in his pocket. 

"I'll just—finish up then," she said. 

"What's to finish up? The stomach was the only important bit." 

"You do realise there's a procedure to post-mortems, right?" Molly lifted her head and fixed him with a stare. She was up to her forearms in the man's abdominal cavity. A bead of blood clung, vivid red, to the edge of her goggles.

"Waste of time," he said, and went for the door. 

"Okay," she said, and looked back down at the corpse. 

The hall outside the morgue was quiet and empty. His own footsteps echoed distractingly. 

"All of the victims had pasta before they died," he said out loud. He slowed his stride. "Why pasta?" 

If John had been there, he'd have said something like: _chef with a grudge?_

And he'd have been wrong, of course, but his observations would not have been entirely unwelcome. 

"No," Sherlock said. He paused, leaned against the wall, pressed his fingers against his lips. "Not a chef with a grudge. A waiter." 

_How can you possibly know that?_

"Please, John, you know my methods," he said.

His voice echoed in the empty hallway. He was aware, suddenly, that he was very much alone. 

He gathered his coat tightly around him as he left the hospital. 

*

"We all process grief in different ways." 

John shifted uncomfortably in his chair, fixed his gaze on the wall, tried not to notice all of the empty spaces Mary no longer inhabited. "It wasn't—" he started, and then stopped. His hand twitched. 

Three days after Rosie's first birthday, he'd booked an appointment with a new therapist. She'd sat and listened patiently as he'd summarised the events of the past year. Occasionally she wrote something down on her notepad. She held it at such an angle that he could not quite read her writing. 

She had not reacted with horror. She had not lectured him, or shouted at him, or told him what a miserable excuse for a husband-father-friend he was. She'd been kind. She'd been gentle towards him. 

He hated her. 

He did not deserve kindness, or gentleness, or forgiveness. 

And, oh Christ, she was still talking. "You experienced a terrible trauma. A sudden loss. It's understandable that—" 

"Stop," John said. 

She stopped. Looked at him. 

"Stop treating me with _compassion,_ " he spit the word, hating the way it sounded, hating the way it felt. He stood up, fists clenched, breathing hard. "Stop telling me how understandable it all is. It's not. It's not understandable." 

"John—"

"I don't understand it," he said, and it felt like a balloon was slowly expanding in his chest, cutting off his airway. His voice sounded distant, unfamiliar, gasping and choked. "It's not—I don't—"

"Sit down." 

He did not sit. 

"It's not acceptable," he said. "Neglecting my daughter, hm? You think that's acceptable?" 

"You did the best you could with the situation. You ensured her needs were met. You recognised that you were unable to fulfill your duties towards her at the time and made sure she was cared for by someone who could." 

"The best I could do," he said, turning the words over slowly in his mind. He shook his head, smiled a little. It was not a comfortable smile. He thought about Sherlock, staring up at him from the floor, blood in his eyes. "My best friend is an addict. He relapsed." 

He could see her struggling with the turn in the conversation. "Oh?" 

"I hit him. I hit him hard, and then I hit him _again._ And then I kept on hitting him. He'd have let me kill him, I think. He'd have—" he stopped, put his hand over his eyes. Was surprised to find them wet. "Was that the _best_ I could do?" 

She looked stricken. "Have you spoken to your friend? Since—?"

"He's forgiven me," John said, and he smiled. It was a painful thing, that smile, pulling at his mouth with no joy behind it. "Or—worse—he thinks there's nothing to forgive." 

She opened her mouth. 

"Stop," he said. He looked down at the ground, at his own shoes against a bland grey carpet. "I can't see him. I can't—why is everyone so desperate to reassure me? I don't need to be reassured. Even Mary—" 

"Mary," she said. "Your wife?" 

"Yeah, she—" John cut himself off, shook his head. 

_Confess,_ Culverton Smith had said.

John found no solace in confession. It was all too much, a messy jumble of painful thoughts. Sherlock had hurt John. John had hurt Sherlock. John had married Mary. Mary had been a liar. Mary had hurt Sherlock. Sherlock had forgiven Mary. John had tried to do the same. But he'd seen an opportunity to hurt Mary back, and he'd taken it. He'd taken it without a second thought. 

And then Mary had died, and he'd turned on Sherlock.

And Culverton Smith had said _I might even put him in my favourite room,_ and John had known what he meant. He'd known it. And he'd done nothing. Not until it was almost too late. 

"John?" 

He shook his head again, went to the door. Let himself out. The evening air was cool against his flushed cheeks. 

He picked up Rosie from the sitter, went home. 

It was time for her to eat, so he heated up a ready-made meal. She batted his hands away as he tried to feed her, instead lifted a fistful of mashed carrots to her mouth. 

"I wanted him dead," he said, looking at the orange smear on her cheek. His own voice startled him, too loud in the silence that had fallen between them. "I didn't, not really, you know. But in that moment. I. I just wanted it to be over." 

Rosie squeezed her hands together, mushing carrot up between her fingers.

"I can't—" John said. He put his head in his hands. 

_Confess._

"Some things are unforgivable," he said, speaking through his fingers, his voice muffled.

Sherlock, on the ground. _He's entitled._

Sherlock, looking at him in the sitting room at 221B, his face sad and beseeching and open in a way it rarely was. Stitches above his eye. 

Sherlock, who would brush it all off given half a chance. Sherlock, who wanted to _hang out._

John did not want forgiveness. He wanted someone to hold him accountable. 

He lifted his head. Rosie was watching him. She'd got carrot in her hair. She caught his eye and grinned, buried her head in her own messy hands. 

Mimicking him. 

He sucked in a breath and stood up, heart warmed in spite of himself. 

He took her out of the high chair, cleaned her up in the sink. Then he brought her into the sitting room, set her down on the floor among a pile of toys. 

She ignored the toys, crawled towards the sofa. Pulled herself up to standing. And then—as he stood watching with his heart in his throat—she took two clumsy, wobbling steps in his direction. 

"Oh," he said, his voice thick. "Oh." 

He went to her, lifted her up in his arms. He was laughing, he realised, perhaps the first genuine laugh he'd let out in months. 

"Good girl," he said. "That's brilliant. Oh—" 

And the laughter died in his throat as he realised there was no one to share the news with.


	5. Chapter 5

*

"—and as she was clearly on her way to get her hair coloured when she was murdered, the killer was almost certainly _not_ her new boyfriend—" 

Sherlock paused, lifted his head. Usually, at this point in the conversation, Lestrade would have interjected some expression of irritation or disbelief. And John would have— 

Well. It didn't matter what John would or would not have done. What mattered was that Lestrade was no longer standing behind him. 

Offended, he straightened up. There were two officers standing at the far end of the room. Neither of them were Lestrade. 

Sherlock huffed, adjusted his coat collar. Walked past the two officers without sparing them a second glance. 

The victim's flat was small. He found Lestrade by the entranceway, leaning over the crime scene tape to speak to Molly. 

Sherlock drew up short, surprised by the sight of her. He disliked feeling surprised. It had become all too common in recent years. 

Molly did not live in the victim's building, or anywhere near it. She was smiling (or, at least, she had been smiling before he approached), so it was unlikely that she was a friend or relative of the deceased. And as she'd most emphatically declined his last request for crime scene assistance ( _oh, no, Sherlock, it was_ awful _last time, please don't make me do that again_ ), he doubted she'd had a sudden change of heart. 

"Hello Molly," he said cautiously, eyeing her, searching for some explanation. "Have you—come to examine the body?" 

Molly laughed, looked down at the ground. Her cheeks had pinked. 

He frowned, unsure what was funny. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he'd missed something significant. 

"No," she said, and she was still smiling a little bit. "I'm here because I've been stood up for dinner." 

"Oi, that's not exactly what's happening here—" Lestrade said. 

Sherlock thought that proceeding directly to the nearest crime scene was a perfect response to being stood up for dinner. He was also fairly sure that he was alone in that thought. It certainly did not explain her presence.

She'd mentioned a new relationship recently, hadn't she? He'd deduced it only a few months ago. Pity it didn't seem to be working out, though at least now perhaps she'd relax her unnecessarily draconian rules on his presence in the morgue. 

"I'm—sorry?" he tried. Satisfied that he'd offered appropriate condolences, he turned back to Lestrade. "Release the boyfriend, he didn't kill her." 

"I—hold on—" Lestrade blinked at him. He seemed distracted, and still slightly amused, and not at all interested in what Sherlock was saying. "Release the boyfriend? But—" 

"Did you even _look_ at the victim? Dressed to the nines, new manicure, flawless makeup. Expensive clothes, trendy bag, and the shoes—" 

"Yeah, all right," Lestrade said, sounding a bit exasperated. "And?" 

"Nearly two inches of root growth on that hair. Clearly not a natural blonde." 

"What does that have to do with the boyfriend?" 

"The _new_ boyfriend. Together less than two months, yes? Someone so obviously fixated on her appearance wouldn't be comfortable letting her guard down that early into a relationship."

"Letting her guard down?"

"The _hair,_ Lestrade! She'd never let him see her before getting it touched up. The killer was someone she felt comfortable with, someone she wasn't afraid to let see the unsavoury bits." 

"So—"

"Her inner circle. Close friends. Family." His gaze swept the room, alighting on a shelf of framed photographs against the far wall. He advanced towards them, scanning the faces. There was the victim, of course, blonde and perfectly coiffed, posing with a variety of family and friends. 

Details, mostly irrelevant, leapt out at him from the array of smiling faces.

_Allergic to cats/afraid of dogs/barrister/prefers sugar in coffee/spray tan/secret smoker_

He waved his hand, frustrated, thoughts dispersing like mist. He honed in on a handful of shots of the victim with the same woman, equally blonde, equally coiffed. 

He picked up one of the photographs, studied it. Read the tension in their wide smiles. 

"Sherlock—" 

"Who found the body?" 

"Her friend." 

"This woman here?" 

Lestrade frowned at the photograph. "Yeah, that's her. How did you—" 

"Why was she here?" 

"She said they had an appointment," Lestrade said.

"For their hair," Sherlock said. 

Lestrade sighed. "All right, if you say so." 

"Almost certainly." 

Another heavy sigh. "I'll confirm it when we talk to her." 

"She's the one who pointed you towards the boyfriend," Sherlock said. It was not a question. 

"Well. She mentioned they'd been arguing a bit, yeah, but—" 

"Forget the boyfriend. It wasn't the boyfriend. This is who you want." 

"You can't just _know_ that from a photograph," Lestrade said, exasperated.

"I don't know, I observe," he said. The response was automatic. 

In his head, unwelcome, John scoffed.

Sherlock shut his eyes, troubled. He set the frame back down. The empty space at his side, so easily ignored moments ago, now seemed like a gaping wound.

"Right," Lestrade said. He sighed, scrubbed his hands over his face. "I don't know why I even ask."

"Bring her in," Sherlock said, his voice emerging sharper than intended. But sharpness was good. Better than weakness. There was no need for Lestrade to know every time his mind took a slight detour into unfriendly territory. "Let her think you're focusing on the boyfriend, that you need her help. The murder was an impulse, not planned, it's unlikely she'll be able to stick to a convincing story." 

"Right," Lestrade said again. "Yeah, we'll—" he sighed again, shrugged a little bit, turned back to Molly. "Looks like you might not be stood up for dinner after all, if you don't mind a bit of takeaway. Let me just call Donovan, have her go round up the—the friend here—and we can grab something before I have to meet them back at the station." 

"Oh, um. Sure. Takeaway is fine," Molly said. She smiled, the expression genuine. 

The pieces fell into place. 

"Oh," Sherlock said. He blinked. 

Lestrade gave him a funny look. "Oh?" 

"You've finally decided to act on your blatant interest," Sherlock said. "That's—good. Only took you five years, give or take." He paused, considered. "More like six." 

Lestrade made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. "I thought you said you told him," he said, the comment clearly meant just for Molly but in a voice loud enough to be heard clear across the room. 

"I did!" Molly said. " _Months_ ago!" 

Sherlock looked between them. Thought about Molly saying _sometimes you don't notice things that are right in front of you for so long._

"Ah," he said. "So that's what you meant." 

"I thought it was obvious!" She was laughing again, bumping up against Lestrade where he leaned in the doorframe. Their body language was comfortable, familiar, and _how_ had he not seen? 

Because she was right. It was obvious. All of those times Lestrade had nearly snapped his own neck twisting to watch her walk by. The way he'd dropped his date plans when Molly had turned up on that night, that terrible night months ago when John hadn't—

Sherlock shut his eyes, forced himself to stop thinking.

"Obvious, perhaps, to those witless individuals with nothing but love on the brain," he said, and smiled in a way he hoped softened his words.

"Yeah, all right, I think that's enough," Lestrade said, his eyes bright (and now it was painfully clear, telegraphed in his every movement, in the smoothness of his shave, in the fit of his suit jacket, the neat line of his haircut—Lestrade was a man in love). "I'd be—well, I think we'd _both_ be happy to never have another conversation like this again, yeah?" 

"Mm," Sherlock agreed. "Arrest the friend." 

"I'm having her brought in for questioning." 

"My way's faster." 

"And less legal." 

Sherlock shrugged, offered a small smile. "Well. I'll leave you to it, then. Enjoy your dinner." 

He ducked under the crime scene tape, sidestepped around Molly, and headed down the hall towards the lift. Pressed the button and waited, avoiding the temptation to turn around. He could feel their eyes on him.

The lift dinged and he stepped inside, letting out a breath of air when the doors slid shut behind him. Only then did he turn around. 

It was . . . it was good. That was what ordinary people did. They fell in love. 

Just because love wasn't something that he—

Just because it wasn't necessarily an option for him, didn't mean it wasn't fulfilling for other people. 

Molly and Lestrade were objectively a good match. They got on well. Both of their lives tended to revolve around Sherlock, which was convenient. Molly was highly unlikely to cheat on Lestrade, which would be an improvement over his last relationship, and Lestrade was—well, he was an idiot, obviously, because everyone was, but he was still orders of magnitude more intelligent than Molly's last fiance.

He'd missed it. They'd been dating for months, making no particular effort to hide it, and he'd missed it. 

He wondered if he was meant to have congratulated them. Or were congratulations reserved for an engagement announcement? If so, he'd get his chance. It was abundantly clear from Lestrade's body language that he was considering such a step, and soon. 

The lift doors opened, and Sherlock swept out into the hallway, headed for the exit. 

The night air was clear. Stars twinkled overhead.

In his two years away from London, it had occasionally comforted him to look up at the stars and imagine John beneath the same night sky. Sentimental drivel, of course, and yet he'd clung to it all the same. 

He thought of John now. 

John, who had stood in the doorway and said _six 'til ten_ but had never returned. 

For a moment he let himself imagine what it might have been like if John had stayed. If he'd asked John to stay, in spite of the uncomfortable silence between them, in spite of the expression on John's face that said he'd rather be anywhere else. 

If he'd stayed. 

Would he be here, now, by Sherlock's side? Would he have laughed at Sherlock's response to Lestrade, and said _Jesus, Sherlock, we talked about it last week, weren't you listening?_

Sherlock swallowed. His face felt warm, his chest tight. There was little point engaging in such an exercise. He had not asked John to stay. John had left and had not returned. Those were the facts. They could not be altered. 

He spotted a taxi, lifted his hand to hail it. He no longer wanted to look at the stars. 

*

The first ring of the doorbell was tentative, a short burst. There was a long pause and then another ring, this one firmer, more decisive. 

Sherlock, John knew, would have been able to deduce the caller's state of mind from those two rings. 

John did not have to deduce. He knew who was at the door, and why. He suspected he knew her state of mind, as well. 

He went to the door. Rosie toddled after him, reaching for him with grasping fingers. He bent to pick her up and she reversed direction, evading his hands and darting off towards the sofa with a giggle. 

John took a breath, opened the door. 

Molly stood on the other side, her shoulders hunched, her hands in her coat pockets. 

"Hello," she said. She offered a tight smile. 

"Hi," John said. He stepped aside to allow her entry. 

She stepped into the hallway. He was conscious of her every motion, read volumes in her silence as she turned her head to take in the state of his dreary little flat. 

He wondered what she was thinking. He thought, perhaps, he did not really want to know. 

Her pinched smile relaxed into something genuine at the sight of Rosie, standing on wobbly legs next to the sofa. 

"She got so big," she said.

"Yeah," John said. He breathed out, relieved to have something to talk about. "She—every day it's something new." He cleared his throat. "Can I take your coat?" 

"Oh," she said. "Sure." 

He watched as she struggled out of the sleeves. The silence between them felt thick, palpable. 

He would have to speak, he knew. He'd asked her to come. 

Rosie had crouched down next to the sofa and was watching Molly with wary eyes. 

John thought of all the time Rosie had spent with Molly in the first few months of her life. Now she was a stranger. 

"She'll warm up," he said. 

Molly looked at him, nodded. Her eyes were sad. 

"Do you—erm—want some tea? Or—"

"Sure," she said. 

John went to the sofa, scooped Rosie up into his arms. She went willingly this time, buried her head against his neck as he carried her into the tiny kitchen. He set her in her highchair, went to turn on the kettle. Behind him, he heard the scrape of chair legs against the lino as Molly took a seat. 

He did not turn around. He busied himself with the mugs and teabags, took longer than necessary retrieving the sugar and milk. He breathed a sigh of relief as the kettle clicked off. 

He poured the water, set Molly's cup in front of her. Stood for a moment with his hands clenched on the back of his chair, then sat. 

Molly blew gently on the surface of her tea. Steam curled up. 

Next to them, in her high chair, Rosie babbled and kicked her legs. 

"Um," he said. 

Molly lifted her head. Her gaze found his, then skittered away. She took a breath, seemed to steady herself. "You asked me to come," she said. She shrugged a little bit, as if to say _so here I am._

"Yeah," he said. He looked back at Rosie, watched her struggle against the straps of her highchair. She'd not tolerate being restrained for long. "Um. It's—it's been a while."

Months, he thought. Months and months and months. More than half a year. 

She huffed a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. Her eyes darted back to meet his. 

"You—" he said. "You're Rosie's godmother." 

Molly bit her lower lip. Said nothing. There were questions in her eyes. 

"She's walking really well," John said. "You can see that she's—well. You can see it." 

Molly smiled, nodded. She seemed a little relieved to have Rosie to focus on. "She's changed so much." 

"She took her first steps, um, almost three months ago," John said. "And I—it occurred to me that she didn't. That she _doesn't._ Um. Have anyone in her life right now. Besides me. Who might care about that." His voice cracked and he looked away, stared down at the table. 

His fault. All his fault. He'd taken her away, he'd isolated her. First he'd abandoned her, then he'd whisked her away from everything she'd ever known. 

_I was so alone,_ he'd told Sherlock's grave, once. _I owe you so much._

"John—" Molly said.

"I thought I knew why I—" he stopped, shook his head. "I thought I knew why I came here. Why I left London. Why I—but I don't think—I—" 

He lifted his head, looked at the wall behind Molly. Mary wasn't there. Mary had not been there for months.

Mary had never been there, not really. 

"I know you don't like me very much," he said, finally. 

He thought of the days immediately following Mary's death, when Molly had been there without complaint, without question. For days on end, she'd been there while he'd fallen apart. 

"That's not—" 

He held up his hand, shook his head. "I know. It's all right. I haven't—I haven't given you much reason to." 

Something in her face softened. She gave a helpless little shrug. 

"It's all right," he said again. "It seems, lately, that everyone I meet wants to tell me that what happened after—after Mary—" he stopped. It was not Mary he thought of, but Sherlock, Sherlock with his bruised face and his beseeching eyes. "That what happened was understandable. Excusable. But it wasn't, was it?" 

Molly shifted in her chair. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and studied him, her eyes swimming with emotion. "I think," she said finally, her voice slow and thoughtful. "Um. That understandable and excusable don't really mean the same thing." 

He took a sip of his tea. His hand shook. He made no effort to stop it. 

"Did you ask me here to shout at you?" she asked. 

He set his mug back down on the table. Smiled tightly. "I don't know. Maybe." 

"I'm not going to shout at you." 

"All right." 

"I wanted to, a few months ago." 

"I know." He leaned back in his chair. He felt overly warm, uncomfortable. Exposed. 

"I can—understand," she spoke the word carefully. "Why things were so hard for you after Mary—after what happened. I'm not upset. And I don't begrudge you the time I spent with Rosie. I don't see how I could. How anyone could. You were hurting. You were a friend and you needed help." 

He nodded, looked down at his mug, watched the ripples in the surface of his tea. He did not trust himself to speak. 

_We all process grief in different ways,_ the therapist had told him. He'd dismissed her. 

"And I can understand why you—" Molly hesitated. "Why you were angry with Sherlock. Why you pushed back. Even though it wasn't his fault. But. Um. The way you treated him—" 

John breathed out hard, braced his hands against the table. 

"He might forgive you," Molly said. "I haven't. Um. I mean, we don't talk about things like that. You. We don't talk about you." 

John flinched. He nodded, looked down at his hands. 

Molly sighed. "I don't think he—well, in his mind, there's probably not much to forgive. But I—" 

He looked up, met her gaze. Her face was tight. 

"I won't," she said. "I can't." 

"Right," he said. He smiled. It almost felt genuine. "Good. Yeah." 

"Good?" 

He nodded, took a swallow of his tea. "Good." 

Molly looked discomfited. She shifted in her chair again, picked up her mug, set it back down. "It's not—I'm not angry at you for the reason you think I am." 

John raised his brows, waited. Thought about Sherlock's face, about blood in his eyes. 

"You just left him," Molly said. The words came out in a rush, pained, a little breathless. "He—what he did for you. He just. Tore himself apart in order to get your attention. And it—well it was a terrible idea, wasn't it? But he wasn't thinking clearly. Not really. And it went badly, of course it did, he's so—he just plans things out so _horribly_ sometimes—but somehow against all odds you were both still standing at the end of it. I don't know how he didn't just—he was so close to _dying,_ John. For real. Not like before. And you—you just walked away." 

John's throat tightened. He clenched his fists, then carefully flattened his palms against the table. 

"The day you—the day you were supposed to come back. He waited for you. He didn't say it. He didn't have to say it. But the look on his face when I—when I was the one to come through the door. Instead of you. It was—" 

"I'm sorry," John breathed. The words emerged faint, distant to even his own ears.

That day. He'd sat home and stared at the clock. He'd thought about all of the reasons he did not want to go to Baker Street. And then he'd sat alone in his house and felt sorry for himself. He'd used Rosie as an excuse, and she hadn't even been there. He'd cast her off. Forgotten her. 

"I was frightened," she said. She swallowed hard, lifted a nervous hand to fidget with her hair. "I thought he might—I was almost certain that we were going to lose him." 

John took a slow breath. "Molly—" 

"There are more ways than one to lose someone," she said. "And I thought. Every time we opened his door to check on him, I thought he'd be gone." She paused, shook her head as if banishing some unpleasant thought. "I don't like hurting him. He seems—I know the way he is, sometimes. How he seems like he can't be hurt. But. He can." 

Sherlock on the floor. Blood on his face. Those sad, haunted eyes. 

"And you've used me to hurt him," she said. "Twice, now. You made me be the one—" she cut herself off, looked away.

"Molly," John tried again. 

She looked back at him, her eyes hard. "What you are to him? I could never be that. I wanted to. I used to want that. But." 

He thought of the way she used to look at Sherlock, like he'd hung the moon. He'd always thought it a bit pathetic, though he'd never said as much out loud. He'd pitied her, in a way. And yet— 

She looked down at her hands, picked at her fingers, a nervous gesture. When she met his gaze again, there was nothing pitiable or soft in her face at all. "You had something—you had something amazing. And you just threw it away like it was nothing." 

"What are you trying to say?" His mouth tasted like ash. He looked down at his tea, but nothing seemed amiss. 

She shook her head, smiled a little. There was pity in her eyes, he thought, pity for him, and wasn't that something.

He knew what she was trying to say. He did not want to know it, but he knew. 

Sherlock's face. Those haunted, pleading eyes. John had told himself that walking away was better, that he could never live up to whatever it was those eyes were asking of him. 

He clenched his fist, breathed out, looked up at the ceiling. Waited for his thundering heart to calm. 

"You know," he said, his voice deliberately light, shaking a little from the effort of it all. "You're the first person in a long time who's been completely honest with me." 

It startled a laugh out of her, a high, nervous sound. She looked down at her tea. "Oh. Um. That's good." 

"You wanted to know why I asked you here," he said. He smiled, held his hands out in a helpless little gesture. "That's why. I knew that I—I knew that you'd tell me the truth." 

She bit her lip, nodded. Looked down. 

He followed her gaze down to her left hand, where a diamond ring gleamed prettily. 

"Oh," he said, reeling a bit. He hadn't noticed, and she hadn't said. 

The world, he thought, had moved on without him. 

"Congratulations," he added belatedly.

"Thanks," she let out another nervous little laugh, fiddled with the ring. She looked pleased in spite of the tension in the room. "I almost never get to wear it. I don't bring it to work. Might rip my gloves, and I'd hate to lose it in someone's abdominal cavity." 

John barked a startled laugh, looked away. 

"Erm," she said. She was still smiling. It was an awkward smile. "Anyway. We've known each other a long time and—well. It just sort of happened." 

It took a moment for her words to catch up. 

"Known each other a long time," he echoed. All at once, the air in the room felt too thin. He struggled for breath, a knot twisting in his chest. His hand shook and he flattened it against the table, held Molly's gaze, kept his face arranged in what he hoped still resembled a pleasant, neutral expression. 

"Yeah. We started spending more time together these last few months after—well—after everything, and something just clicked, and then—" she shrugged. 

"That's nice," John said. He nodded. "Good. Yeah. That's—" he stopped, looked down at the table. Sucked in a breath through his nose. Looked back up. "No. Sorry. You and—?" 

"Greg," she said. She smiled, looked down at the ring again. 

"Greg." He breathed out. The knot in his chest tightened and then relaxed. "You and Greg. Of course. Right. That's good." 

She looked at him. She did not ask where his thoughts had strayed. 

They finished their tea in silence.

After tea, she bid farewell to Rosie. John handed her her coat. They stood together in the hallway, regarding each other in the dim light. 

"You can—" John said, and stopped. He cleared his throat, looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then nodded, managed to meet Molly's gaze. "If you wanted to see her again. I think she'd like that. I'd. _I'd_ like that." 

"Yes," Molly said, with a determined little jut of her chin. "Yes, all right."

She let herself out. Her footsteps were quiet, muffled by the patchy carpeting as she retreated down the hall. 

He watched from the doorway long after she had turned the corner and disappeared from view. 

*

Sherlock let the door slam behind him, loud enough to rattle the knocker against the wood. 

He stood for a moment, carefully removing his gloves and folding them into the pockets of his coat, then hanging his coat on the hook.

When he was done, he jogged up the stairs to his flat. He made no effort to step quietly. 

He went into the bathroom first, inspected his face. Satisfied that the crusted blood below his nose was the worst of it, he wet a flannel and carefully began to mop it away. His nose was tender, and there was a darkening patch below his right eye, but there'd be no lasting damage. 

When he emerged into the kitchen, he was pleased to see that his noisiness had yielded the desired result. Mrs Hudson was waiting by the counter in her nightdress, arms folded, expression cross. 

(He'd calculated only an eighty percent chance of success. She had managed to surprise him on occasion, so he could never be too certain.)

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" she said.

He smiled. "Did you bring up any tea?" 

"It's half past midnight!" 

"Biscuits, then?" 

"What's happened to your face?" 

Sherlock paused, dabbed again at his nose. "Slight miscalculation."

The suspect had been left-handed. But he'd swung with his right, and Sherlock—who'd anticipated the move but not the direction—had ducked right into the blow. 

A foolish oversight, that was all. He should have seen it coming. And, of course, it likely wouldn't have happened at all if John had been—

_No._ He had to stop. He had to stop doing that. It had been—it had been months. The better part of a year, at this point. He was Sherlock Holmes and he worked alone, and if he sometimes made too much noise late at night to lure his landlady upstairs because without her there the silence was far too loud and he couldn't seem to stay settled (he took no joy in being alone anymore, he simply paced and paced and drifted about the place like a bewildered ghost, ping-ponging off the furniture), then that was his business and his alone. 

Well. His business and Mrs Hudson's. 

Mrs Hudson made a distressed sound, went to the freezer, emerged with a bag of frozen peas. "Hold still." 

He flinched away. "The tea?" 

"Don't make me get the handcuffs again," she warned. The bag of peas descended on his nose. 

He stood for a moment, allowing it. His nose _did_ hurt. And it wasn't as if he had any plans for those peas. He'd never even known they were there at all. 

He allowed himself to be steered into the sitting room, nudged into his chair. He tilted his head back, pressed the bag of peas against his face. He closed his eyes. 

He heard Mrs Hudson retreat, tutting to herself. A squeak of springs as she settled into John's chair. 

John's chair. 

Funny that he still thought of it that way. He still couldn't quite shake the habit. 

"You know," Mrs Hudson said, in a tone of voice that told him he would not like whatever she had to say. "There comes a time where you have to recognise that you're far too old to keep carrying on the way you used to." 

He lifted the peas from his nose, shot her an incredulous look. "I presume you're referring to yourself? I'm hardly a pensioner." 

She sighed, scooted forward in the seat a little bit, wrung her hands together. "It's different when you're on your own, Sherlock. It ages you." 

"Surely you've realised that's not how aging works." 

She huffed. The sound was wistful, a little sad. "You think you're being clever, rattling around up here at all hours of the night. God forbid you just knock on my door and ask for some company." 

He opened his mouth, shut it again. 

"You never used to mind it. Being alone," she said. "But it's different now, isn't it? Has been, ever since John—" 

"I merely lost track of time," he said. "Won't happen again."

"You can't trick me. I've known you for far too long, young man."

"Young man, now? Moments ago I was elderly and infirm. Good God, woman, make up your mind." 

She huffed again, more impatient than sad, and that was an improvement. But then she spoke, and it wasn't an improvement at all. "Oh, Sherlock, I just don't like to see you like this. All alone." 

"I'm not alone," he said shortly, sweeping his hand in her direction. 

"You know what I mean." 

"I'm quite sure I don't." 

"John's not the only man in the world, you know," she said.

He swallowed. "Obviously not. About four billion others, actually. Give or take a few million in either direction. But who's counting?" 

"And you're very handsome. I'm sure—" 

"Mrs Hudson," he warned. 

"After Frank, I—" 

There was nothing left to be done but tune her out. He leaned his head back against his chair and dropped the bag of frozen peas back onto his face. Shut his eyes. 

Found himself standing in front of John's door. 

He startled at the sight of it. He had not been there in some time. The red sign still hung, bold white letters issuing their firm declaration: CLOSED.

But the door itself—

The door was ajar. 

He reached out a curious hand, brushed it along the wood. Nudged it open. The hinges creaked, rusty with disuse. 

The room inside was dark, musty and damp. He stepped forward. Around him, familiar shapes rose out of the darkness, dusty and worn. The sitting room at Baker Street. 

"Hello," John said. 

Sherlock stopped walking. 

John was sat in his chair, his hands folded in his lap. The fireplace was dark and cold. 

"Is there a case?" John asked. He smiled blandly. 

Sherlock looked at him. He did not look like John, not really. He wore his hair short, the way John had years ago. His face was mild and pleasant, not etched with sorrow or anger or guilt. 

"I'll get my coat," John said. 

"No," Sherlock said. His voice caught. He shut his eyes. "There's no case." 

"Oh," John said, and fell silent again. 

Sherlock crept closer, eased himself down into his own chair. It was solid and familiar beneath him. 

The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy. It reminded Sherlock of that day, that terrible last day, the hours he and John had passed together, avoiding each other's eyes and making polite conversation. It was hateful. No wonder John had left and had not come back. 

"You haven't been here in a while," John said, breaking the silence. 

Sherlock gripped the arms of his chair. Thought about the sign on the door, thought about _six 'til ten._

"I gather," he said, speaking slowly, irritation unfurling in his chest, "that this is all supposed to _mean_ something. That I'm to take something away from this experience, some obscure hint from my subconscious, some pearl of wisdom to—" 

"Maybe," John cut in. He shrugged.

"You think otherwise?" 

"Well. I'm not a genius." 

"Obviously," Sherlock said. "But—?" 

"But I think you might just be lonely." 

Sherlock barked a laugh, the sound brittle and sharp. He looked away. "Is that all it took to have you unlock the door? Loneliness? Your deduction is flawed, John, because—" 

His voice faltered. He stopped, swallowed. The last nine months had been the loneliest of his life. The months before, after Mary had died, had been lonely as well, they'd been _terrible_ , but there had been loads of cocaine and the looming spectre of Culverton Smith to keep him occupied. Once the distractions had been taken away, oh, that was when the true hell had set in. 

"I'm not lonely," he said, finally. He heard the childish defensiveness in his voice and winced. 

"No?"

"No more than usual," he conceded. 

"Yet something made you come." 

"The door was unlocked." 

John laughed. It was a sharp sound, not entirely amused. For a moment, he sounded like himself. 

"Sherlock," John said. "You could have picked that lock any time you wanted." 

Sherlock looked at him, at the hair that was all wrong, at the mild smile that John never wore anymore, at the shapeless jumper that John had long ago traded for button-down shirts. This John was an amalgamation of memories, crafted for convenience and maintained by necessity during his time away. 

He could insult Sherlock or compliment him, could talk and joke and guide, but what he could never actually do was surprise him. In the end, Sherlock was only talking to himself. 

And it might have been easy to accept this substitute, months ago, scraped raw as he'd been. But not now. 

"I miss you," Sherlock confessed. He put his head in his hands. "Not _you._ Him."

"I know," John said. 

When he left John's room, he did not lock the door behind him. It did not matter. He would not be back. 

Sherlock opened his eyes. 

The bag of peas had thawed and was slumped damp and mushy over his face. He grimaced, brushed it aside. It hit the ground with a dull plop. 

Faint predawn light crept through the windows. The chair across from him was empty, Mrs Hudson long gone. 

_John is not the only man in the world,_ she'd said. 

But he was. As far as it mattered to Sherlock, he was. 

He stood, his joints creaking. There was a pile of cold cases near the door that he'd been ignoring. He went to them now. The folders were old, the pages yellowed and brittle. He took the first file with him into the kitchen, dropped the others onto John's chair without any particular reverence. 

It was, after all, just a chair. 

*

People were pressed shoulder to shoulder at the bar, shouting to be heard over the crowd. John perched on the edge of a stool, squeezed uncomfortably close between Lucy and a woman whose name he'd missed but suspected might be Lucy's cousin, she of the seven-year-old son. 

All around him, people were laughing and smiling. 

John finished the last of his beer, scratched at the sticky bartop with the edge of a fingernail. He'd been good at this, once. Socialising. He'd liked it. Hadn't he? 

Rahid, the partner who had hired him on at the surgery, hailed another round. The barmaid took John's empty glass, swapped it for a full one. Beer sloshed over the rim and he swore, shook his fingers, swiped them on his trousers. 

"I want to raise a toast," Rahid said, and lifted his glass. His voice was loud, warm with good cheer. "To Dr Watson. John." 

John lifted his head, startled.

"We've been asking you to join us for Friday night drinks for— oh— the past ten months or so. And this is the first time you've taken us up on it. Hopefully the first of many. So."

_Ten months,_ John thought. And then: _shit._

He forced a smile, tipped his glass in Rahid's direction. 

The staff were close. Closer than the staff at the surgery he'd worked at in London. Happy hours and birthday parties and all that rot. He'd finally allowed himself to be talked into going along. It was, he'd thought, what normal people did.

"Well," he said, when he realised that all eyes were still on him. "It's nice to. You know. Get out, once in a while." 

"Your daughter," Lucy said, her voice pitched to sound sympathetic. 

"Hm? Yes, Rosie," John said. He took another swallow of beer, nodded. Decided that offered him a reasonable escape hatch and gave an exaggerated glance at his watch. "I have to pick her up by eight. So." 

"John's a single dad," Lucy said, leaning over to speak around him. 

"Oh?" the woman on his right (Gemma? He was fairly sure Lucy had called her Gemma) said, offering him a wide smile. "What a coincidence. I'm a single mum." 

"Ha," John said. He smiled tightly in response. "Starting to feel like it's not a coincidence at all, actually."

"No?" She laughed and nudged against his shoulder, the gesture flirtatious. He could smell her perfume. 

"The universe is rarely so lazy," he said. He shut his eyes, took a too-large swallow of beer. Coughed.

"You got me," she said, somehow managing to lean even closer. "So what would you say if I told you I came here tonight specifically because— hmm— a little bird told me you might be here?" 

He turned to look at her, ignoring the terrible wrenching feeling in his chest. 

She was lovely. Long hair, a little wavy. Silky floral top that she clearly saved for special occasions. Bare arms, a dusting of freckles on her shoulders. Her eyes were bright, her smile mischievous. 

"I—" he said. 

"You...?" she teased, still smiling.

_She's got a tan. In November._ It was Sherlock's voice in his head, dry and drawling and bored. _Just back from holiday._

"You're just back from holiday, yeah?" 

She blinked, glanced over his shoulder towards Lucy, looked back. "Er—yeah. Malta, actually. Did Lucy tell you that?" 

"Your tan," he said. He forced another tight smile, looked down at his drink. Thought of the look Sherlock had given him the last time they'd seen each other, when he'd walked out of Baker Street for the last time. Christ, he was never going to be able to get that out of his head. 

"Clever boy," she said, her smile blooming anew. 

"No," he said. He drained his glass, set it down on the table. He felt cold all over, cold and miserable and hopelessly out of his depth. "Not clever. Just—" 

_He waited for you,_ Molly had said. 

"Just…?" 

He stood up, reached for his wallet. Dropped a few notes on the table to cover his share of the tab. "Just a bit of a bastard, that's all." He picked up his coat. "Sorry. I'm—I've got to go." 

He headed for the door, ignored the few halfhearted attempts to call him back. 

There was a cold drizzle falling and he hunched into his coat, wishing he'd thought to wear something warmer. He walked quickly, past familiar storefronts, down streets he had come to know but which had never quite felt like home. 

He missed London, terribly. 

He missed _Sherlock_ terribly. 

It was November. He had two months remaining on his lease.

The days had felt endless but the months had moved quickly, he thought. He was going to have to decide what he wanted to do next, and soon. 

His dreary little flat would not suffice long-term. He'd need something nicer, larger, with room for Rosie to grow. The only question was whether he wanted to find that flat in Chelmsford, or back in London. 

The thought of London, _London,_ the city he'd always loved, punched the breath out of him, left him reeling, dizzy and sick with longing. For a moment, just a moment, he could not fathom why he'd ever left at all. 

_You just left him,_ Molly had said. 

He had, hadn't he? He'd looked at Sherlock's face, battered and bruised and wanting, and he'd flinched. He'd turned tail and run, he'd run and he'd kept on running.

He could run for the rest of his life, he thought. After a while, it wouldn't even feel like running any more. A nice flat, unchallenging work at a cosy practice, watching Rosie grow and become part of the community around her. Maybe a woman like Gemma by his side. 

It would be a fine life. Stable. Respectable. Comfortable. The kind of life that anyone would be lucky to lead. 

And he would _hate_ it.

He'd never wanted stable or respectable or comfortable, not really. The things he wanted— 

He didn't deserve the things he wanted, but oh, he _wanted._

John stopped walking, pressed his fist against his mouth. His heart ached. He took his phone out of his pocket, looked at it. Opened up a text message. 

_Hi,_ he typed, and then let a breath of air hiss out through his teeth. He did not press send.

He stared down at his phone, his fingers growing numb, icy rain slipping down the neck of his coat. He shivered. He could not recall ever missing a person so much it felt like a physical ache. Only ever Sherlock. Now and—before. 

_Please,_ he wrote, and stopped. His face was wet. He did not think he could entirely blame the rain. 

What could he say? What could he _possibly_ say, after all this time?

He sniffed, deleted his text unsent. Put his phone back in his pocket. Started walking. He ignored the unpleasant voice in the back of his mind that said he was still running.


	6. Chapter 6

*

The shop was crowded and John stooped to pick Rosie up, not wanting her to be trampled underfoot. She let out a shriek of protest, arched her back, writhed in his arms. He held firm. Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades. 

He breathed a sigh of relief as she caught sight of a Christmas display against the wall, all twinkling fairy lights and gleaming baubles. She stopped struggling, pointed. 

He carried her closer so she could see, careful to keep far enough away that she could not reach the delicate strands of lights with her straining hands. 

Faint strains of Christmas music drifted from the overhead speakers. 

Once, he'd found the whole thing pleasant. Throwing himself into the Christmas rush, searching out thoughtful gifts for the people in his life. Mulled wine and decorations and the beautiful sweet sound of the violin— 

He sniffed, looked down at Rosie.

Christmas had been shit for a while, though. Last year she'd been too young to know, of course, but this year—this year mattered. He couldn't just pour himself a drink and wait for the whole thing to be over this time around. 

It wasn't like he had many people to shop for. Toys, a little tree, some fairy lights. He could do that much for her. 

Unbidden, he thought of Baker Street, of garland on the mantel and fairy lights around the windows, of Sherlock coaxing carols out of his violin with his back to the rest of the room while snowflakes drifted down outside. 

It had been mad and beautiful and Rosie would have loved it, he knew, he'd seen the way she reacted to bright colours and busy patterns and there was so much, _so much_ for her to look at. 

The display in front of him blurred. He shut his eyes, sucked in a breath through his nose. Rosie shifted in his arms, restless again. His shoulder had started to ache. She was getting far too heavy to carry for any length of time. 

"Dadadada," she wailed, pushing against his chest. He sighed, shifted her around so her weight settled on his hip. 

He picked up a package of fairy lights, made his way through the crowd towards the register. There was a queue, and he waited with no small measure of impatience. Rosie was less agreeable by the moment. He dared not set her down on the ground. She'd squirm free of his hand in seconds and bolt off into the crowd.

_"Dadadadada."_

"Shh," he urged, very conscious of others in the queue turning to look at him. 

The man ahead of him finished paying, turned around. And John found himself face to face with a ghost.

He dropped the fairy lights. He did not, mercifully, drop Rosie, though it was a near thing. 

"I—" John said. 

"Excuse me," the man—the man wearing Evan Bell's face, Evan Bell, who had died half a world away and who had haunted John's conscience for months after it had happened—said. There was no recognition, not so much as a flicker.

This wasn't—it wasn't like before.

"Evan," John said, even as he knew it could not possibly be true. 

The man's face, which moments before had been blandly irritated, hardened. "No." 

"Sorry," John said. He stooped to retrieve the lights from the ground. The package had dented but the contents seemed unharmed. He felt flushed, dizzy, unsettled. "I thought. Sorry. You just—reminded me of someone I used to know." 

The man—not Evan, because Evan was dead, but _God_ they looked similar—stared at him for a bit too long to be comfortable. And then he was gone, pushing roughly through the crowd. 

John stared after him, blood roaring in his ears. He choked down the urge to call the man back. 

"—to pay for that? Sir?" 

He startled, returned his attention to the clerk behind the desk. "Sorry?" 

"I said are you going to pay for that?" 

He blinked at her for a moment, then looked down at the box of fairy lights still clenched in his hand. His fingernails had left little crescent-shaped marks in the cardboard. 

"Oh," he said. "Yes. Sorry." 

He set the box on the counter, watched distractedly as she rang it up. Rosie squirmed and strained in his arms. 

Evan Bell. 

_Only the one you felt guilty about._

He'd dreamt about Evan Bell, only a few months ago. The first time the man had crossed his mind in years, and now this. Harassing strangers in line at the shop because of a passing resemblance to a dead man. 

Christ, he was losing his mind. 

He snatched the bag from the clerk when she had finished ringing up his purchase. Muttered a halfhearted apology over his shoulder as he made for the door. 

In his arms, Rosie squirmed and squirmed and squirmed. 

The cold night air was bracing. He took a deep breath, and then another. 

Evan Bell was not waiting for him outside. There was no ghost with a youthful face and blank blue eyes lurking in the alleyway shadows. There were no ghosts at all. 

*

Christmas drew closer.

John put up the fairy lights in his dreary little flat. It made things brighter. 

"It looks . . . nice," Molly said, when she came to visit Rosie. Her mouth was pinched, her eyes sad. 

He did not want to see the flat through her eyes. It was bad enough seeing it through his own. 

*

"The kitchen is quite large, and there's a perfect space over here for a child's play area—" 

John trailed behind the realtor, only half paying attention as she rambled on. The flat they were in was nice. The three flats she'd taken him to earlier had been nice as well. 

He looked at tall windows and spacious kitchens and bedrooms with tastefully painted walls and he wondered how he was ever supposed to manage to care about any of it. It was, he thought, the sort of thing he ought to care about. He should want to make a home. 

"—do you think?" 

He startled, looked up at the realtor. Her face was tired, he thought. He'd likely contributed to that.

"I'm just not—hm—no," he said, shook his head. "Not quite what I'm looking for." 

She sighed, though the expression on her face remained politely professional. "Dr Watson, this flat has everything on your list." 

"Yeah," he said. "It's just—I guess I'll know it when I see it, yeah?" 

She opened the folder in her hands, riffled through the papers. There was an air of frustrated desperation in her movements. 

"We could try—" 

"You know what, maybe we can finish this another time?" he asked, forcing a smile onto his face. "It's getting late, and I need to pick up my daughter. Sorry for the—" he smiled, shrugged a bit as his voice trailed off. There was not much to say. 

Outside, the sky was already beginning to darken. He pulled his coat tight around him and set off at a brisk walk. All around him, the storefronts were lit up with twinkling lights. 

He walked, and thought about London. 

He could email a realtor, he thought. It couldn't hurt to find out what was available in his price range. It would mean changing jobs again, uprooting Rosie. But he'd never really put down many roots to begin with. 

Well. Emailing a realtor wasn't quite the same as making a decision. It was just research.

Christmas was only a week away. On its heels was the new year. And after that—

Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a familiar shape. He stopped in his tracks, muttered an apology to the person behind him who had to swerve to avoid walking into him. 

He was drawn to the window of a brightly lit shop like a moth to flame. Inside, his back to the window, was—

Sherlock. 

John stared. It was him, it had to be him--the height, the slim shoulders, the Belstaff coat with its collar turned up. The dark curls, a bit shorter than he remembered. He was with a stranger, a woman John had never seen before. She had her hand on his arm. 

A case? A client? 

He put a gloved hand against the glass. His heart pounded against his ribs. He thought about opening the door, about stepping inside. Thought about saying _Sherlock,_ and seeing him turn around, meeting his eyes.

Would he smile? John did not deserve a smile, but oh, God, how he wanted one. It had been such a long time. Almost a year, now. Almost a year. 

John let his hand drop away from the glass. He clenched his fist, released it, the leather squeaking against his knuckles. He went to the door and pushed it open. 

The little bell over the door tinkled as he stepped inside, and Sherlock turned around. 

John stopped. 

It was not Sherlock. The face was all wrong, soft in all the places where it should be sharp, sharp in all the places where it should be soft. His eyes were brown. He was wearing glasses, thin wire spectacles. 

The hesitant smile died on John's face. He breathed out hard through his nose, shook his head. Blood pounded in his ears. 

"Oops," he said, giving an exaggerated look around. "Wrong shop." 

He went back through the door and onto the street. The cold night air did nothing to cool the flush in his cheeks. 

Disappointment and regret curdled in his throat. He'd wanted— 

He pinched the brow of his nose, shut his eyes. When he opened them again, Evan Bell was standing across the street watching him. 

"Jesus," John said. He looked away, looked back. Evan was still there. 

John put his hand up, a tentative wave. Took a step forward into the street, only to lurch backwards as a taxi sped by, horn blaring. 

He scrubbed his hands over his face, rattled. When he looked again, Evan was gone. 

"Jesus," John said again.

He was losing his mind. He had to be. First Sherlock, and now this. Haunted by the ghost of a man he hadn't so much as thought about in nearly ten years. 

Behind him, the shop door opened and shut. The tall man with the long coat who was very decidedly _not_ Sherlock stepped out with his companion, shopping bags in hand. They were laughing together, their voices mirthful and unfamiliar. They paid John no mind as they passed by. 

*

His realtor had grown frustrated with him. He could hear it in her voice, in the way her warm greetings had turned cool and clipped. 

John could not blame her. He was wasting her time, and they both knew it. He found reason after reason to dismiss the flats she showed him. 

The realtor he'd reached out to in London had sent a list of properties. He hadn't looked at any of them. 

It was the holidays, he told himself. It was hard to focus on anything with Christmas bearing down on him like a runaway train.

It might be easier to just sign another year's lease on his current flat. It was too small, but Rosie was young yet. He was used to the place. It wasn't—well it wasn't comfortable, exactly, but it wasn't that bad. He'd been equally miserable in his house in London, after all, and that had been far more spacious. He doubted that taller windows would make all that much difference in the end. 

After Christmas. He'd decide after Christmas. 

*

Evan Bell watched him with solemn eyes from alleyways, from bus stops, from shop doorways; a silent spectre amidst roiling crowds of people. He never said a word. 

John put his head down, ignored him. 

*

It was two days 'til Christmas, and the surgery had closed its doors three hours early for a staff party. 

The room was brimming with good cheer. John stood with a plastic cup of red wine, wearing a polite smile and counting the minutes until he could make his excuses and leave. 

Lucy approached, smiling. She clinked her cup against his. 

"Merry Christmas," she said. 

"Merry Christmas," he echoed. 

She was wearing a ghastly green jumper with a red reindeer on it. The reindeer had tiny bells on its stitched antlers that jingled when she walked. It had been making patients smile all day. 

It was the sort of thing that would have driven Sherlock barmy.

"How's your daughter?" Lucy asked. Her voice was friendly, but guarded. She'd not mentioned her cousin again. He was grateful for that. 

"Good," John said. He took a swallow of wine, nodded. "Good, yeah. She's good." 

"That's good," she said. She smiled, the expression a little forced. Nodded her head in time with the music coming out of the little boombox. 

They were all so careful around him. Had been ever since the disastrous happy hour. He couldn't really blame them. 

He'd just never been the type to make friends easily, that was all. Sherlock had been the exception to that. He'd taken to Sherlock right away. God knew why, but he had. 

John sighed, looked down at his drink. 

"Did you finish your shopping?" Lucy asked. 

He took another sip. Nodded. "Mm, yeah. Well. It's just me and Rosie, so. There wasn't much." 

"Ah," she said. "I've still got some last-minute things I need to get." 

He smiled tightly, nodded again. He wished she'd leave him alone. She'd clearly taken pity on him, standing alone against the wall, but he could tell she was already regretting making the effort. 

He thought about his little flat, and the lease that still needed to be signed for another year. He thought of the emails from his realtors—the one in Chelmsford and the one in London—that he kept avoiding. He thought about the prospect of spending the next several years of his life working at this little practice, with these kind but utterly uninteresting people. He wondered how long it would be before he felt comfortable there, before his rough edges were finally smoothed away enough to let him slot neatly into place. 

The thought made him squeeze his eyes shut and suck in a sharp breath. 

"Yeah, the wine's awful, isn't it?" Lucy said. "I made that same face when I took my first sip. The second cup goes down better. Or maybe you just care a little less by then." She let out a little hiccup of laughter, nudged him with her elbow. 

Christ, but she was trying. She always made an effort to include him in conversation, no matter how many times he rebuffed her. And he could barely bring himself to give her the time of day. 

What was _wrong_ with him? 

He thought about the man he'd glimpsed through the store window the other night, the one he'd been so briefly convinced was Sherlock. The way his heart had sped up, the way he'd walked through that door so ready to—

Ready to _what?_

He didn't know. He hadn't thought it through, he'd simply acted. But he'd been ready. He'd wanted. He'd wanted _desperately._

Was that how it was going to be, from now on? Him, jumping at shadows, hoping against hope that Sherlock would simply blunder into his path one day? Was he really that much of a coward? 

He couldn't do this anymore. 

"Sorry. I've got to go," he said. 

Lucy smiled at him. It was a sad smile, but not a surprised one. "Yeah, I figured. Have a happy Christmas, Dr Watson." 

*

It was not a storybook Christmas, not by any means, but John supposed he pulled it off well enough. 

Rosie was enamoured of the brightly wrapped gifts under the tree. She was still too young to grasp the concept of Father Christmas, but she threw herself wholeheartedly into the necessary task of ripping and tearing. 

She was less certain of what to do with the gifts she'd uncovered— a set of building blocks was met with mild trepidation (he deemed it a cautious success), the board books were ignored entirely, and while she made an enthusiastic "vrrrroooom" sound at the first glimpse of a toy car she seemed disinclined to push it around on the carpeting. 

Molly had sent a gift, a little ginger stuffed cat, and that—oh, _that_ she liked. She picked it up immediately and held it to her chest. 

He smiled down at her, snapped a picture, sent it to Molly along with a text. 

_She loves her gift, thanks_

She did not respond right away, but he hardly expected her to. It was Christmas, after all. People were busy on Christmas. 

*

The staff at the surgery were meeting for New Year's drinks. 

"I've got plans," John said, with what he hoped was an appropriate tone of regret. No one pushed him for details, so he assumed he'd either been convincing enough or they were secretly relieved not to have him along. 

His plans included a Tesco ready meal and a date with the telly. Rosie was in bed by seven, in spite of his best efforts to entice her to stay awake. Sleep-deprived toddlers made poor company. 

He fought a losing battle against the cellophane on his dinner, muffling his struggles in an effort not to disturb Rosie. He finally managed to wrestle it into the microwave. 

The microwave beeped and he took the carton back out, hissing as he burned his fingers on a bit of sauce that had dribbled down the side. He got out a plate, set it on the counter, went to spoon out his portion. Stopped. 

Silly to soil a plate, really. He'd only end up washing it. 

He took his first bite directly from the container. Stood hunched over the counter, chewing mechanically until his fork scraped against plastic. He tried not to think about Sherlock. It seemed like he was always, always trying not to think about Sherlock. 

It had been almost a full year since he'd seen him, since he'd spoken to him, even, and still he was unable to banish Sherlock from his mind. 

In a few short hours, it would be January first. His lease was up at the end of January.

John rinsed his fork out in the sink, dropped the plastic carton in the bin. 

He took his laptop into the sitting room with him, turned it on. Stared at the unopened emails from his realtors—the one in Chelmsford and the one in London. 

He wished, irrationally, that he could simply hand the decision off to someone else. That someone would simply turn up on his doorstep and hand him a new key and tell him where he could find his new life. He'd go, he thought. He'd always been good at following orders. 

He turned on the telly, careful to keep the volume down. Set his laptop on the coffee table, leaned his head back against the sofa. Shut his eyes.

The phone was ringing. 

John snapped his eyes open, stiff and bewildered and overwarm. He had, for just a moment, been on the sofa at Baker Street. There had been a fire crackling merrily in the fireplace. Sherlock had been at his side, close enough that their knees bumped. John had been smiling. Sherlock had been smiling too, catching his lower lip in his teeth the way he did sometimes when he was exceptionally pleased. 

It had been lovely, achingly warm and comfortable and John had wanted to reach out and trace his finger along the laugh lines on Sherlock's face, had wanted to draw him close and taste that awkward, charming smile—

The phone. 

_The phone._

John lunged for it, knocking it from the coffee table with clumsy, sleep-stiff fingers. He swore, bent to pick it up. 

"Hello? Sh—" he stopped, caught himself. 

"Happy New Year, John!" it was Molly on the other end of the line. She sounded cheerful, a bit drunk, her voice just a shade too loud. There was background noise, too, a din of chattering voices and distant music. 

"Happy—" he paused, stretched his neck, disappointment crashing over him. He'd fallen asleep. It was after midnight and he was alone on the sofa in his dreary little Chelmsford flat. "Happy New Year, Molly. It's—um. Nice to hear from you." 

"We're out at the pub," she said, the cheer in her voice fading into caution. "Just wanted to check in. Not that you need checking in on! Just. You know. It's just nice to hear from friends, sometimes." 

"Yeah," he said. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, looked up at the ceiling. "Good. I'm good." 

"Hug Rosie for me," Molly said. "Not now, of course. In the morning. When she wakes up." 

"Will do," he said. He breathed out hard through his nose. "And, um. Thanks. For—for the call. It _is_ nice to—yeah. To hear from friends." 

"Good," she said, and there was relief in her voice. "I'll—um. Call you next week. I'd like to make another trip out to see Rosie soon." 

"Maybe we'll come see you," he said without thinking. As soon as the words were out, his chest went cold.

There was a pause on the other end of the line. He sat very still and listened to the faint sounds of muffled merriment and Molly's breathing. 

"Oh," she said, finally. "Oh. That. That would be—that would be good. Really good, John." 

"Right," he said. He found himself anxious to get off the line. "Well. Don't keep Greg waiting, yeah?"

She laughed, the tension broken. "Not a chance. You know he's really talented with—" 

"Hanging up now," John said, and ended the call. 

He let the phone drop down to the sofa cushion at his side. Scrubbed his face with his hands. Sighed. His laptop was still open on the coffee table, the screen dark. He pulled it towards him, woke it up. Looked at the email from the London realtor. 

This time he opened it without allowing himself to hesitate. It was just an email. The addresses were just words on a screen, the pictures just pictures. It was nothing worth getting so worked up over. 

The flats she'd sent him were fine. No better or worse than the Chelmsford ones he'd looked at. More expensive, certainly, but he'd manage. 

Could he do that? Could he just—could it possibly be that easy?

He groaned, shut the laptop. Stood up. His spine creaked in protest. 

The dream was already fading, details gone soft and blurry, leaving behind little more than a vague ache in his chest. He'd been kissing Sherlock, he thought. Kissing him, or about to. That should have clued him in right from the start that it was a dream. He'd be lucky if Sherlock ever even spoke to him again. There would be no kissing. 

He used to think about kissing Sherlock. Years ago. He used to think about it a lot. He'd inevitably follow those thoughts with all of the reasons it was a bad idea. And then Sherlock had been dead, and John had wished that he'd taken a chance on that bad idea, just once. 

John went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, washed his face. He thought about Molly, out at the pub with Greg, celebrating. He wondered where Sherlock was, what he was doing. Had he rung in the new year alone in the flat? Had he been out on a case, lit up with adrenaline and entirely unaware of the date? Or had he joined Greg and Molly at the pub, thrown back a few pints and let some attractive stranger claim his mouth at midnight? 

Doubtful, he thought. 

Still, John's brain helpfully offered up visuals. Sherlock, his cheeks pink with drink, his eyes closed. Someone else's hands buried in those curls. 

He did not want to think of Sherlock snogging some beautiful stranger. It had been a year, nearly a full year since they'd seen one another, and he still could not quite bear the thought of Sherlock being touched by anyone else. He never could, if he was being honest.

The thought was maddening. As if he had any claim. He'd walked away. He'd looked into Sherlock's pained and pleading eyes and had turned his back. 

There was a time when he'd known what he wanted. He thought he'd known. But he'd fucked it all up. He'd thrown it away. Again and again and again. 

John turned off the tap, braced his hands on the sink. Stared hard at himself in the mirror. He looked tired, and old, lines etched in his skin by years of sorrow and anger. His eyes were sunken, shadowed, haunted. 

He did not recognise the man looking back at him. And he did not like him. 

He turned away from the mirror, went down the hall into his bedroom. He did not bother to turn on the light. He undressed in darkness, slipped beneath the covers. 

The moon was high and bright, visible through the small bedroom window. John rolled onto his side towards it, tried not to think of the vast empty space beside him, the bedding unwarmed by another body. 

The moon flickered, briefly blotted out by something large and dark. 

John sat up. 

There was a face at the window. 

"Jesus," he hissed. He threw back the blanket, lurched to his feet. His gun was in a lockbox in the wardrobe, safe from Rosie's curious fingers but inaccessible in a hurry. 

He abandoned thoughts of trying for the gun, instead crossed the bedroom in three quick steps, flung open the window. 

Icy night air rushed in. He looked left, then right, heart pounding. The fire escape was empty. 

John shivered, his skin pebbling beneath his thin t-shirt. He took a steadying breath, shut the window. Stood in his quiet dark bedroom, rubbing his hands over his chilled arms. 

The face at the window had looked like Evan Bell. 

He huffed an incredulous laugh, shook his head. He'd spooked himself, that was all. 

As he returned to the relative warmth of the bed, he ignored a faint tickle of unease. He had not felt spooked any of the other times he'd seen Mary, or Sherlock, or even Evan, long ago as that had been. He'd felt sad, and resigned, and guilty, terribly guilty, sick with it. But never _spooked._

"Fuck," he said, and put his hands over his eyes, pressed. He wondered if he was losing his mind. Hell, maybe he already had.

*

In the morning, he looked again at the email from the London realtor. He closed it without responding. 

There was still time. He didn't have to make a decision just yet. 

*

By January second, Rosie had decided she liked the board books she'd received for Christmas after all. 

"Ree," she demanded, handing it to him. 

He obliged. She sat next to him on the floor in her bedroom, her little hands braced on his leg so she could lean forward and look at the pages as he turned.

He looked at her, bright-eyed and vibrant against the dingy walls, the faded carpeting. She'd grown accustomed to their ugly little flat. She'd have no memories of the house they'd shared in London, and no memories of Baker Street. 

He'd failed her, terribly, when Mary had died. 

Was he failing her again now? 

"Ree," she said. She took the book out of his hands, prodded him with it. 

"Again?" he asked. 

She responded by settling in close, looking at him expectantly. He dutifully opened the book, started again. 

*

On January third, he put Rosie to bed and lay awake in his own room, helplessly aware of the passage of time. 

In three days, it would be a year since he'd walked out of Baker Street for the last time. Since he'd fled from the oppressive air, choking on all of the things he couldn't say. 

There was a part of him, a deeply buried part, that had thought Sherlock might come after him. That he might simply turn up one day, tall and imperious and terribly out of place in John's dismal little flat. 

He hadn't. Of course he hadn't. 

And now, almost a year on, John found himself facing the troubling realisation that he simply might never see Sherlock again. That the stilted, uncomfortable words they'd shared were the last, the final nail in the coffin of a friendship (and oh, Christ, it had been more than a friendship, he'd never had a friendship like that) that had finally collapsed under the weight of every terrible thing they had done to one another. 

John put his hand over his eyes, sucked in a shaky breath. Listened to the rain beat against his window. 

Down the hall, Rosie cried out. 

He tensed, waited to see if she would need further soothing. When several blessedly quiet minutes passed, he relaxed again, scrubbed his hands over his face. 

Even when he'd run, even when he'd left Sherlock behind, even when he'd told himself and anyone who would listen that he was done, he'd—he'd thought—

"Christ," John said, staring up at the ceiling. "You came back from the bloody dead. What's an hour on the train?"

But it wasn't the distance. Of course it wasn't. He knew that. 

He thought about Molly, about the shocked hurt in her voice when he'd called that day to tell her he wasn't coming back, when he'd asked her to cover for him like he was calling out of a distasteful shift at work. 

And he thought about the look on her face in his dingy little kitchen, thought about her saying _there are more ways than one to lose someone._

He was trembling. His face felt hot, his eyes stinging. 

_You had something amazing. And you just threw it away like it was nothing,_ Molly had said. 

He had. Christ, he had. All of the times he'd wanted Sherlock and had pushed down the words, all of the times he'd caught himself staring and had turned away. The way Sherlock was so careful with him in the months and years following his unlikely return from the dead, as if frightened of driving him off. Sherlock's face, pale and shocked, his hand outstretched towards John while Mary lay dying on the ground. 

Sherlock on the floor in the morgue at St Caedwalla's, letting himself be kicked. Sherlock in his chair at Baker Street, looking at John with that pained face but letting him walk away. 

John blinked, hard. Moisture leaked from the corner of his eyes. 

Christ, if he could only go back in time. If he could only go back to that day, that terrible day that hadn't felt momentous at all at the time, if he could only go back to that moment in the sitting room at Baker Street, if he could only—

He'd push the stilted politeness aside, he thought. He'd sit back down in his chair next to his empty cup of tea and he'd tell Sherlock everything. He'd tell him about Mary, about the way his guilty conscience kept her close. He'd tell him how fucking sorry he was, and how grateful he was, and how badly he wanted them both to just _stop,_ to take a breath and marvel at the fact that in spite of everything that had happened, they were both still there, together. 

A floorboard creaked and John sat up, some wild irrational part of him half-expecting to see Sherlock lingering in the doorway. 

Evan Bell stood in the corner of the room, staring at him from the shadows. He looked older than John remembered, his face haggard and haunted.

"For fuck's sake," John said, flopping back down onto his pillow. He laughed, a miserable, humourless sound, let his arm fall across his eyes. "I've got to tell you, mate, I'm really not seeing the point of all this." 

The rain continued to patter against the window glass. John listened to it, punctuated by the sound of his own harsh breathing. 

He thought of Mary—well, not Mary, exactly, but the Mary who lived in his head—saying _Only the one you felt guilty about._ Mary, who had disappeared entirely once he'd confessed his heart to her.

 _Confess._ Culverton Smith had been all about his confessions. The thought still made John's skin crawl uncomfortably. 

"All right," John said. He laughed again, kept his forearm pressed over his eyes. "I must be losing my fucking mind. But. All right. Evan Bell—" he lifted his hand in a mock salute in the vague direction of the spectre in the corner, "I told you that you were going to be fine, and you weren't. You were scared, and—" his voice broke and he shook his head, shut his eyes. "You were scared, and I didn't pay enough attention. I missed the signs. You died on my watch, and I thought—sometimes I _still_ think—that I could have stopped it." 

He laughed again, though the sound emerged sounding like a sob. 

"Is that enough?" he asked, his voice overloud in his quiet bedroom. "Is that the confession you've been looking for? That it was my fucking fault?" 

He opened his eyes, let his arm fall down against his side. His breathing came hard and fast. 

The bedroom was empty. His unwelcome visitor was gone. 

*

John awoke in the early morning feeling poorly rested and hungover, though he'd not had anything to drink the night before. He'd slept badly, his thoughts muddled and confused. He'd dreamt of Sherlock, and of Evan Bell, and of blood on the pavement in the shadow of Barts Hospital. 

He had not dreamed of Mary, at least not that he could remember.

A glance at his alarm clock revealed it was later than he'd expected, and he swore, threw back the duvet and struggled out of bed. He showered and dressed hastily, then hurried down the hall to Rosie's room, drawn by her happy babbling. 

She was standing in her cot, and she reached out her arms to him when he entered the room. He hoisted her up, bounced her a little bit as he rummaged in her dresser for a fresh nappy. Her room was cold, and he made a mental note to turn up the heat a bit. 

"We've got to hurry a bit," he murmured as he changed her. "Sorry. Daddy's got to be at work by seven." 

She was not inclined to be cooperative, but he finally wrangled her into a fresh nappy and new clothes. She went scrambling off towards her little toy box and he turned to watch her, his attention snagging on the window in the far corner of the room. 

The curtains stirred gently. 

He dropped the soiled nappy into the bin, went over to the window. It was open, just slightly, enough to let in an icy breeze. 

He frowned, pushed it shut and checked the lock. The carpet just below the window was damp, faintly dirtied. Rain must have blown in during the night. He turned back to look at Rosie, who rummaged through her toys, unaware.

He did not recall opening the window. 

He did open it, occasionally, to air out the room after changing Rosie. But the early January air had been biting cold, and he'd opted to spray a bit of air freshener instead the last few days. 

John frowned. Considered. Could Rosie have—? He dismissed the thought almost immediately. Even if she'd managed to climb up on the furniture to reach the window, she'd never have had enough leverage to pull it open. 

He looked down at his watch, hissed when he saw the time.

"Come on," he said to Rosie, bending to scoop her up. "We've got to go, or I'm going to be late." 

He double-checked the window before he left. It was shut snugly, and locked. Already her room felt warmer. 

*

Evan Bell was standing, half-shadowed, in an alleyway when John stepped off of the bus near the surgery after dropping Rosie off at the sitter. John glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, ground his teeth together, kept walking. 

Clearly his late-night ruminations had done little to appease his subconscious. 

He made it halfway down the street before a thought, terrible and unwelcome, broke through.

The damp carpet in the flat. Rosie's window, cracked open with rainwater dribbling in. The cry she'd let out in the night before settling again, almost as if something had disturbed her—

John stumbled, blood roaring in his ears. He bumped into someone, muttered a halfhearted apology. 

Christ. _Christ._

The face at the window. The vague sense of unease and foreboding that had been clinging to him for weeks, ever since that strange encounter at the shop. 

What if there really had been someone there? 

The idea was almost too absurd to consider. He was clearly in the grip of some kind of psychological—episode—and he needed to do something about it. He'd thought the worst of it had passed when he'd finally let Mary go; obviously he'd been mistaken.

And yet—

Why Evan Bell? Why now? Seeing him had made its own sort of sense all those years ago, when John had lain awake, sleepless and haunted and surrounded by death, torturing himself with what-ifs and should-have-dones. But Evan Bell had died in Afghanistan, and that's where John had left his ghost. 

John had thought of him once, a few months ago, bolting awake from unsettling dreams. But even then the memory had been fleeting, immediately replaced by more pressing concerns. Evan Bell and the sad circumstances of his death had been left firmly in the past.

_Only the one you felt guilty about._

And yet Evan had reappeared, and John had not questioned it. He'd simply accepted it, that this was—that this was just part of his life now. All of his past failures, all of his mistakes, haunting him in perpetuity with stoic faces and somber eyes. 

The damp carpet under the window. Rosie crying out in the night. 

"Oh, God," he said. He pushed through the door to the surgery, stood breathing hard in the little reception area. There were a few patients already waiting. One woman shifted in her seat, turned to look at him curiously. 

"Good morning Dr Watson," Lucy said.

He turned to look at her, watched her expression slip from bored friendliness to concern. 

"Are you all right? You look—" 

"I'm going to need someone to cover my shift," he said absently, moving towards the window. He pressed himself against the wall, peered through the dusty blinds. 

Evan Bell was there, right there on the street. He strolled past the window, hands in his pockets, walking at a leisurely pace. There was nothing terribly threatening or unsettling about him at all. 

Except for the fact that he was dead. 

"Dr Watson, what—?"

"I'm sorry. I've got to go," he said. He went back to the door and back out onto the street, icy winter air buffeting his face. 

John broke into a jog, staying against the buildings where he might have a reasonable chance at ducking into a doorway for cover, keeping Evan Bell in his sight. Evan's pace had picked up; he walked with a brisk purpose wildly dissimilar to the slow ambling pace he'd adopted outside of John's workplace. He did not fade away like a proper ghost. 

Now that John had accepted him as real, the pull towards confrontation was almost too strong to ignore. He could taste it, hot copper in the back of his throat. His fingers itched to curl into fists, to strike and drive the truth out of unsuspecting flesh. 

A few paces ahead of him, Evan turned a corner. 

Cursing, John hurried forward, rounded the corner after him. The street he'd turned onto was nearly empty. There was no sign of Evan anywhere. 

"Shit," John said. He clenched his fist, unclenched it. His heart thundered in his chest. 

Evan must have seen him. 

Or—or perhaps he'd truly never been there at all. 

John thought again about the damp carpet beneath Rosie's window. Had he been careless? Left it open? He'd never willingly endanger her, but perhaps—

No. He'd closed it. He was almost certain of it. 

Evan Bell was dead. He was certain of that too. 

And yet Evan Bell had been in his flat the night before. Actually there, and not just in John's mind. Somehow. 

John started moving before even aware that he had made the decision to do so. He broke into a jog, and then a sprint, his breath coming hard and fast, his face aching from the cold. He paid no attention to the handful of pedestrians on the street who turned to look at him as he thundered past. 

Less than half an hour later, he was on a train to London.

*

London was as cold, and grey, and _alive_ as John remembered. 

He dithered after stepping off the train, the hot panicked urgency that had propelled him in the first place receding, replaced by a sick seeping dread. 

He had come to London because Sherlock was in London. Because he had an unsolvable problem, an unsavoury little mystery that was either unfolding inside the walls of his dingy little flat or inside the confines of his own troubled mind. He had an unsolvable problem, and Sherlock Holmes was the man you went to for unsolvable problems. 

He bought a coffee and a stale croissant, ate as he walked. Thought about Sherlock as he'd last seen him, wounded and curled in on himself in his chair. Thought about those sad fucking eyes, about the polite and halting conversation, about the ugly black stitches marring his brow. Thought about the unkind things John had said, and the even worse things he'd thought. 

He thought about the two long years he'd believed Sherlock dead, the miserable hours he'd passed in conversation with Sherlock's ghost. The things he'd wanted to say, but never could, not even to himself. 

He finished the croissant. He did not recall tasting it. His coffee had gone cold.

*

It had been nearly a full year since John had laid eyes on 221B Baker Street. Almost to the day. 

He hesitated at the door. Even after all this time, after everything that had happened, it felt wrong to simply ring the bell. He used his key instead, ignoring the little tingle of guilt the action prompted, and stepped inside. He closed the door quietly and carefully behind him.

The hallway smelled achingly familiar—dust and old wood and papered walls. He breathed it in for a moment, tears stinging at the corners of his eyes. Then he flexed his hand and went up the stairs without further delay. 

"Stop dithering and come in," Sherlock drawled as John's steps creaked on the landing. "Please be brief. And for the love of God, don't be boring." 

"Not sure I can promise that," John said. He took a deep breath, stepped inside. 

Sherlock was standing at the mantel, frowning down at the skull. He turned at the sound of John's voice.

"John," he said, and he looked shocked.

No, he looked more than shocked, he looked _shattered,_ like the life had been sucked right out of his body, his eyes wide and stunned and his face frozen. And just as quickly he was masking, he was hiding, he was rearranging his face and his body language into something far more neutral, something utterly indifferent, and if John hadn't seen it, if John hadn't _known_ him, he would have thought that his sudden appearance had made no impression whatsoever. 

"What can I do for you?" Sherlock asked, turning towards his chair, and then he hesitated, looked back at John. "Oh, but where are my manners? Can I offer you a cup of tea?" 

"Sherlock," John said, feeling like the ground had dropped out from beneath him. He shook his head, hesitated. The flat looked exactly the same as it always had. It felt disconcertingly like he had stepped back in time. 

_If only._

"No tea?" Sherlock went towards the kitchen, moving too quickly, his voice rushed and clipped. "Biscuits, then? Coffee? Glass of water?" 

"Nothing," John managed. He cleared his throat, clenched and unclenched his hand.

"Sorry?" 

"Nothing," John said, a little louder. "Thanks." 

"Ah," Sherlock said, coming back from the kitchen empty-handed and settling himself smoothly back down in his chair. He tented his hands in front of his mouth, fixed John with an alarmingly cool gaze.

"Look," John said, shifting uncomfortably. His face had heated. "I'm sorry." 

"Sorry? Sorry for what?" Sherlock dropped his hands into his lap, furrowed up his brow in an almost obscene parody of confusion. 

John shifted again where he stood in the doorway. Sherlock sat exactly where he'd been the last time John had seen him. His expression was closed off, achingly far from that bruised and searching gaze he'd once fled from. 

"For—just—showing up. Like this." 

Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. "Most clients do." 

That brought John up short. "Um." 

"That is what you're here as, yes?" Sherlock peered at him, eyes pale and focused, no warmth anywhere. "A client?" 

"Well." 

Sherlock sighed, impatient and theatrical and it was wrong, _wrong_ to have that tone and that demeanor and that cool detached expression aimed in his direction. 

It was wrong, but he could not claim to deserve anything better.

"Clearly something's happened, something serious, you wouldn't have come all the way from Chelmsford on a lark," Sherlock said, sitting forward in his chair. He'd tented his hands again, rested his chin on them. "An early train, too, though you didn't come directly here. Stopped off for a cup of coffee and a croissant—so, pressing matter but not entirely urgent. Croissant crumbs on your sleeves—you didn't bother to remove your coat. Bit too warm for that in a crowded café during the morning rush. Ate outside, then. Splash of mud on the side of your left shoe—"

John could not help but glance down. Sure enough, a streak of crusted brown mud swept across the aged leather of his shoe. 

"—says you took a detour to Regent's Park. Why Regent's Park? Close proximity to Baker Street. So! What can we deduce from that? You set out with the intention of seeking my help, yet found yourself reluctant to follow through once you'd arrived. Instead you elected to stop off for a cup of coffee and a croissant you did not want in an effort to buy yourself additional time to consider your options, and _lacking_ additional options—which is what brought you to London on an early train in the first place—you elected to come here at last."

"Right," John said, smiling tightly. All of the breath had gone out of him. "Spot on. As always."

"Not always," Sherlock said softly. 

Their gazes met. There was a flicker of—of _something,_ and then Sherlock's face hardened once more.

It felt, John thought, uncomfortably like looking into the eyes of a stranger. 

It wasn't worth it. Nothing was worth this. He'd—he'd ruined whatever chance there had been at making things right between them. He'd put Sherlock in the hospital, and then he'd cut and run instead of facing what he'd done. 

Like a coward. 

And now, here he was, about to beg help from the very person he'd turned his back on. 

Christ, Sherlock would be right to pitch him out into the street. But he wouldn't do that, he wouldn't, because he was Sherlock Holmes, and he _cared,_ he cared even if he didn't want to admit it, and he'd help John even if it meant putting himself through hell. Again.

And here John was, daring to feel prickly and uncomfortable because Sherlock was a bit standoffish. 

"Sorry," John said. He shut his eyes, shook his head, breathed out hard through his nose. Opened his eyes. "I'm sorry. Sher—" his voice caught on Sherlock's name. He took another breath, began again. "Sorry. This was a mistake. I shouldn't have—I'll just—go." 

He turned, fled down the stairs without looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not plan for this chapter to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Sherlock's premiere, but it worked out that way. It feels somewhat fitting that Sherlock and John should wind up in the same room at last on this date (albeit briefly). 
> 
> My deepest thanks to everyone who has been reading along and commenting. I've got a good head start on the next chapter, so my hope is that there will not be quite as long of a wait as there was this time around. My best guess is that the completed story will run somewhere around 9 chapters in total. 
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](https://discordantwords.tumblr.com/) if anyone wants to stop by and say hi!


	7. Chapter 7

*

Sherlock did not move as John fled through the door. 

For a moment his mind stuttered, glitched, and he was sore and trembling and tired, just out the other end of a dark and winding tunnel. And John was in the room, and John was speaking to him, but John was closed off in a way that seemed permanent, that seemed final. 

_Stay,_ he'd wanted to say. _Please, please stay. Please don't leave._

But John had been lost to him, then. John had smiled tightly and spoken bland reassuring platitudes, and had disappeared out the door with no intention of ever coming back. 

But he had come back. 

It had taken him time, almost a year. But he had come back.

He'd come back to ask for help. 

_John Watson never accepts help, not from anyone._

Sherlock sat forward in his chair, pressed his fingertips against his lips for a moment. 

_John Watson never accepts help._

John had pushed aside the awkwardness of their last meeting. He'd swallowed his pride and he'd squared his shoulders and he'd come to _ask for help._

That meant—

It meant—

 _Pressing, but not urgent,_ Sherlock had said from behind his hastily constructed armour. That's what he had read in John's movements, in his body language, like he'd been any other client. But he didn't think that was right at all. It was urgent. It had to be urgent, because it was John. 

He bolted up from the chair, tore down the stairs without bothering to stop for his coat. Baker Street was crowded, pedestrians in heavy coats bustling along the pavement, exhaust wafting up from passing cars. 

"John!" he shouted, but it was hopeless. 

He took off at a run towards the Tube station, twisting to avoid mowing down a family of four walking at a glacial pace. The air was cold on his face and he was slow, too slow, too _slow._

He drew up short, breathing hard. He'd not catch John, not on the Tube. And even if he could, interrupting John's retreat and cornering him in such a way would only put him on the defensive. He'd be likely to lash out, to bury his need under a flurry of righteous anger. 

Sherlock turned, started back towards the flat. The wind bit through the thin fabric of his shirt and he regretted leaving his coat behind. 

Mrs Hudson called something to him through her door as he stepped back inside. He ignored her, went up the stairs, rubbing at his arms. A bubble of panic had settled in his chest, and he swallowed convulsively. 

John lived in Chelmsford now. Sherlock knew that. He'd known it since receiving word that John had left London. It had not been difficult to deduce. John thrived on unpredictability, but when stressed tended to retreat into the familiar. He took a level of comfort in rote repetition, in following orders. He'd have returned home, to the city of his boyhood, without ever bothering to consider _why._

For a moment Sherlock's mind snagged on that, on the _wrongness_ of John residing anywhere but London. Working at a boring little medical practice, seeing boring patients, socialising with boring coworkers. Perhaps dating; he was an attractive widower, after all, and Rosie needed a moth—

Sherlock cut off that line of thought. It was not helpful. It did not matter. What mattered was John, standing in the doorway with a grimly determined face and a problem that needed solving. 

He sat down in his chair, ran the tips of his fingers across his mouth. Thought about the kind of trouble that John might have found himself in. It could not be a simple legal matter. John would have had no hesitation about involving local authorities. Perhaps Rosie—but no, the child was far too young to have got herself involved in anything dangerous, and if she'd been harmed in any way John would have handled it through other channels without requiring his assistance. 

No, this was something else. Something more sinister. Something that John would not feel comfortable taking to the police. Something personal. 

Sherlock would have to tread carefully. He would need to be delicate, which was not particularly his strong suit. 

He slipped his phone out of his pocket, considered the pros and cons of texting John. It would be less invasive than pursuing and cornering him on public transit. Without the pressure of immediate confrontation, John might be more inclined to open up. On the other hand, texts were far too easy to ignore. John, on the retreat, considering his entire endeavor a _mistake,_ would be just as likely to delete the text unread. 

No, it would have to be a direct confrontation. 

Not right away. John would put himself on a train to Chelmsford with his back up and adrenaline spiking through his veins, castigating himself for making the trip to London in the first place. By the time he arrived home, the self-recrimination would have faded to some mixture of shame and irritation about wasting an entire day on the train with nothing to show for his efforts. Reimmersion in his home environment would remind him of why he'd made the trip in the first place, as well as the fact that he still had a significant problem that required solving. 

And that, _that_ was where Sherlock would step in. 

Evening, then. John would have eaten dinner, would have settled the child in bed, and would once again be alone with his anxious thoughts. The problem would loom large. If he were ever to be receptive to an offer of help, that would be the best time. 

Matter decided, Sherlock reached for his laptop, dragged it off the desk towards him. He booked himself a one-way ticket on an evening train from Liverpool Street Station. Then he closed his laptop, sat drumming nervous fingers on the lid. 

John. 

There had been a year's worth of data etched into the lines of his face, and Sherlock had been too stunned to take proper note of it. He'd not make that mistake again. 

*

It was just past seven o'clock and already long gone dark when Sherlock found himself standing outside a rather dismal apartment block in Chelmsford. 

He'd dressed for the occasion—crisp shirt, neatly pressed suit. His scarf was carefully wound around his neck, shielded by his turned up coat collar. For John to allow him anywhere near this case of his, it was imperative that he see the impeccable consulting detective and not the wounded former friend. 

The block of flats was—not what he'd expected. 

He'd not spent much time ruminating on where John had chosen to put down roots, but he supposed in the back of his mind he'd expected something like the warm little house he'd shared with Mary. This was more akin to a prison. It unsettled him. Why had John chosen such a place, when surely he could afford better? 

There was a pack of cigarettes in his pocket and he reached for it, turned it over in the palm of a gloved hand. John would smell the smoke on him. The thought made him hesitate for longer than it should have, and then he shook it off, lit a cigarette. 

He stood in the shadows and watched the building, the little flickers of light behind small windows, signs of life within. John was somewhere inside one of those small boxes, going about his evening routine. 

Sherlock finished his cigarette, dropped it onto the pavement, ground it out with his heel. 

"Into battle," he murmured. 

*

The hallway was poorly lit and smelled vaguely of mold. Through thin walls he could hear the faint sounds of a baby crying, an endless, whooping squall. He curled his lip in distaste, thought of John returning to this place after work, night after night after night.

John had chosen this. _Why_ had John chosen this?

There was something curdling in the pit of his stomach, a queasy mixture of regret and dread. 

When John had left—when John had made hasty excuses and disappeared from Baker Street all those months ago—never once had Sherlock questioned his decision. 

He'd hated it. He'd despaired of it. But he'd not questioned it. 

John had left him behind, because that's what John had needed to do. After the mess with Culverton Smith, after everything that had happened with Mary, what John had needed from Sherlock was for him to step away and let him live his life. 

Hadn't he? 

It had hurt, terribly, to be left behind. He was not immune to sentiment. He loved John. He would always love John. He'd wanted to keep John near to him, always. But John had not wanted that. And so Sherlock had let him go. 

And this was where he had gone.

Sherlock swallowed, hard. Perhaps he should have reached out in some way. Shown up here months ago, told John that he was being utterly ridiculous with this self-imposed exile. Because that's what this was, wasn't it? Exile? He'd mistaken it for a fresh start, but—

He shook off the thoughts, irritated at himself for the distraction. There was an overwhelming amount of data in the hallway, a sensory rush of sights and smells and sounds all competing for his attention. None of it mattered, yet _all_ of it did, because John regularly walked these hallways, John called this place home.

Sherlock stopped at the door to John's flat, brushed his knuckles against the wood in a gentle knock. The door nudged open. It had not latched shut. 

John did not leave doors ajar. John closed them, and locked them. He had a toddler. He was not careless.

The distant sound of the screaming child was much louder now. It was, he realised, coming from inside John's flat. 

The queasy feeling that had been pooling in Sherlock's stomach coalesced into a solid ball of dread. The smoke that had soothed his nerves moments ago now tasted sour and vile in the back of his throat. For a moment he feared he might be sick. 

Sentiment, he thought. The grit on the lens. But he needed his lens clear. He needed to be sharp.

"John?" he called, pushing the door open. The hinges creaked. 

The flat was small, and poorly lit, and had quite obviously seen violence. 

He sucked in a breath, took it all in. The flipped coffee table. The shattered television. The smashed drinking glass, pungent scotch soaked into the carpet. 

Down the hall, the child—Rosie—screamed and screamed and screamed. 

No neighbors had come. No one had so much as poked a head out into the hallway when he'd passed. It was, he supposed, easy enough to ignore a crying child when one was used to the sound. Children cried for all sorts of reasons. But the sounds of a struggle, the breaking glass and shouting? _Had_ John shouted, or had he been caught by surprise? 

And where was he now? 

Sherlock tore himself away from the ghastly scene in the sitting room, followed the noise to a small bedroom at the end of the hall. There were no additional signs of violence in the hallway. No blood. No (his mind tripped over the thought and he forced himself to press on, this was no time for sentiment to cloud his mind, he needed to be ruthless) body. 

Rosie was standing in her cot, shrieking. Her face was flushed red and sweaty, her hair matted against her skull. 

Sherlock went to her instinctively, then hesitated. She went on screaming as if she hadn't seen him at all. 

He took off his gloves, put them in his pocket. Picked her up, surprised at the heft of her. She'd been so very, very small when he'd seen her last. 

"Hush now," he told her, as she fisted onto his coat and burrowed closer, still screaming. "It's all right."

"DADADADADADADADA!" she howled. Her voice was hoarse, heat radiating from her body. She must have been screaming for quite a long time. 

Sherlock patted helplessly at her back, turned to study his surroundings as he did so. The top bar of the cot was chipped, worn in places. He bent to look closer. 

Teeth marks. 

He thought of all of the research he'd done on child development. The research he hadn't needed. 

Teething. She'd been teething, and had ground her teeth against the wood in search of relief. The marks were a few months old, at least. Irrelevant to the current situation. 

Her room was tidy and, as far as he could tell, undisturbed. There was a water stain on the carpet under the window that appeared fairly recent. He readjusted Rosie on his hip, checked the window with his free hand. Shut and locked. 

He carried her out of the room and back down the hall, paused to glance in at a small bathroom. It was unoccupied, undamaged. The bathtub and sink were dry. Rosie glimpsed herself in the mirror and gave a hiccuping sob.

There was one additional door off the hallway, this one shut, and Sherlock hesitated with his hand on the tarnished knob. The doorway almost certainly opened up into John's bedroom. It was the only place left in the tiny flat where he might conceivably find a corpse. 

Against his chest, Rosie's cries slowed to miserable whimpers. She clutched at him, seemed to not care that he was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. 

"Shh," he said. He turned the knob and nudged the door open with his hip, bringing one hand up to cup Rosie's face and shield her line of sight from anything untoward. 

The room was unoccupied.

The window on the far wall was wide open, curtains billowing in an icy breeze. Sherlock went towards it, glanced out at the fire escape. It was empty. He peered down into the shadows at the ground below. Nothing stirred. 

There was mud on the carpet just below the window (faint imprint of a man's shoe, size ten), and a smear of the same drying on the window ledge. Someone had entered the room via the window and had not bothered to pull it closed behind them. Sherlock stooped to feel at the carpet. It was damp. 

He considered the water stain (recently incurred, but now dry) on the carpet in Rosie's bedroom, and wondered if the same someone had been using the windows to gain access to the flat for some time. Rosie's window was locked. Was that why the intruder had entered through John's instead? 

Rosie shivered against him and he hastily stepped away from the window, steered them both out of the room. He pulled the door shut behind him to block out the worst of the cold. 

He'd misjudged. Badly. He'd wasted time, angling for the perfect moment to approach John. He should have followed him immediately, confrontation be damned. He'd wasted time, and now John was—

John was—

He shifted Rosie in his arms, dug his phone out of his pocket. Dialled. 

"Sherlock, unless you've suddenly become interested in attempted robberies, I've got nothing for you," Lestrade said, not bothering with a greeting. "I'll call you when I do, but—" 

"I need you in Chelmsford," Sherlock said.

"Chelmsford? What in the world are you doing there?" 

"There's been a—" he hesitated, took another glance around the devastated sitting room. "An incident. Home invasion. Kidnapping. Not more than an hour ago, by my estimation, but we'll need CCTV footage to determine—" 

"All right, then call the police," Lestrade said. "They'll—" 

"I am calling the police." 

"Call the police in Chelmsford." 

"I don't need them, I need you," Sherlock said. 

"Sherlock, I'm in London. If you—" 

"Greg," Sherlock said. He swallowed hard. "Please. It's _John._ "

There was silence on the other end of the line. 

"Yeah," Greg said, finally. "All right. I'm on my way." 

*

Rosie was not amenable to being set on the ground, or in her cot, or on any soft surface in the flat. The moment Sherlock attempted to extract himself from her grip, she resumed wailing. Her cries, hoarse and miserable and dragged out of an already much-abused throat, were terrible to endure. 

"All right," he said, feeling flustered and useless and entirely out of his depth. He picked her up again, let her clench onto his shirt. The relentless sobs slowed, then stopped.

It was nearly impossible to examine the flat with a toddler clinging desperately to his chest. 

Not just any toddler. John's daughter. John and Mary's daughter. One of the three people he'd vowed to keep safe. He'd already failed her parents. Mary was dead. And John was— 

John was not. Not yet, anyway, and Sherlock aimed to keep it that way. He'd not fail again. What was the bloody _point_ of it all if he couldn't manage that much?

The intruder had accessed the flat via the fire escape, and had clearly surprised John in the sitting room. There had been a struggle. The unlatched front door and the absence of both John and the intruder, as well as the abandonment of the child, all led to the conclusion that the intruder had gained the upper hand.

There was no blood in the flat, and no corpse. John had left the flat with his assailant, possibly drugged, possibly injured, but almost certainly coerced in some way. He'd not have left Rosie behind willingly, and no murderer would have bothered to creep in via fire escape but then leave through the front door with a dead man in tow. And—regardless of the neighbors' apparent indifference to crying children and loud noises—it was doubtful that anyone dragging a body through the halls of a crowded apartment block would have gone entirely unnoticed.

Frustrated, Sherlock shifted Rosie in his arms, crouched to examine the shattered television. His gaze landed on a mobile, _John's_ mobile, face-down on the floor against the wall. He reached for it, picked it up. The screen was dark, spider-webbed with deep cracks. 

He set the phone back down where he'd found it, turned to look at the sofa. 

John had been sitting there, against the left armrest. The cushions were worn and dipped in what was clearly his favourite spot. He'd put his child to bed and had sat down on the sofa. He'd poured himself a drink. Had he been inebriated?

Sherlock stood, knees creaking, Rosie an ever-increasing weight in his arms, and made his way towards the sofa. He skirted around the toppled coffee table and crouched down again by the evidence of the spilled drink. 

He took a delicate sniff, reached out a finger to prod at the damp carpet. Nearly a full glass, he estimated. He stood again, rearranged Rosie on his hip, and went into the kitchen. 

John's car keys (Audi, hatchback, he'd kept the car he and Mary had shared) hung on a peg over the counter. There was a collection of takeaway menus stuck to the front of the fridge. The rubbish bin held the remains of a Tesco ready meal (shepherd's pie) and an empty plastic carton that had, it seemed, once held ravioli. He assumed that had gone to Rosie. The sink was empty, but there was a lone plate on the drying rack. John always preferred to tidy up immediately after eating. He'd hated it when Sherlock left a mess—

Sherlock growled under his breath, refocused. There were no liquor bottles on the counter, and there had been no empties discarded in the bin. He opened cabinets until he found what he was looking for: a single half-empty bottle of scotch. He picked it up, examined it. Inexpensive brand, but not entirely bottom shelf. John tended to be frugal but not cheap, and his taste in liquor fell in line with that. 

The label was slightly stained, where little dribbles of liquid had escaped during pours. The stains were old, long-dried. Yes, the bottle was half-empty, but it had taken a fair bit of time to get that way. Given that pace of drinking, it was likely that the glassful that had wound up soaked into the carpet had been John's first of the night. And the fact that the bottle had been put away in the cabinet rather than left out on the counter was suggestive of the fact that John had intended to have just the one drink. 

Not inebriated, then. 

Not inebriated, but he _had_ been taken by surprise. Someone had managed to creep up on him in the sitting room.

It was difficult to creep up on John. He was an army veteran with hair-trigger reflexes. Even with the telly turned up (he wouldn't have had it turned up, not with a sleeping child in the flat), John should have been aware that he was not alone in the flat. 

Rosie whimpered, and Sherlock shifted her in his arms again. 

John. On the sofa, watching telly. He'd poured himself a drink.

(Thinking. Alone with his anxious thoughts, hadn't that been what Sherlock had predicted? John had put his daughter to bed and had retreated to the sitting room to worry over his problem. The problem that had brought him all the way back to London, to Baker Street, to Sherlock.)

Sherlock shut his eyes. He'd been meant to intervene. He'd been meant to knock on the door to John's flat, to catch him unawares but receptive. He'd been meant to say something reassuring like _let me help you_ and John would resist at first because he was John, but he would let Sherlock in because he'd been the one to reach out, because he needed help and he knew it, because perhaps he'd missed—

It didn't matter. Sherlock had misjudged the situation, and it didn't matter how receptive John would or would not have been to his appearance at the front door. It didn't matter, because John's problem had been much larger and much more urgent than even Sherlock had suspected, and it had come knocking first. 

And now John was gone. 

*

Lestrade was not alone when he arrived, looking grim-faced and unhappy. Molly was with him. 

Rosie, who had gone quiet and still in Sherlock's arms, flailed violently at the sight of her. 

"Olly," she said, twisting and stretching her arms out, suddenly urgent. "Olly!" 

Molly reached for her, took her gently from Sherlock's arms. Rosie latched onto her, buried her face against Molly's neck. 

"You've seen her recently," Sherlock said. There was no need to say it. Rosie clearly knew her. 

"Yes," Molly said. She bit her lip. "A few times." 

Sherlock shut his eyes.

"Sherlock," Lestrade said. His voice was distant, pained. 

He opened his eyes. Lestrade was in the sitting room next to the smashed television, one hand on the back of his head. He was looking down at John's mobile on the floor. 

"What happened here?" Lestrade asked.

"Can't you tell?" 

"Where's John?" 

"Popped off to the shops," Sherlock snapped. 

"Christ, mate, I'm only trying to help—" 

"Then help," Sherlock said. He stabbed an angry finger at the sofa, the sagging, empty sofa that had, at one time, cradled John. "An intruder gained access to the flat via the fire escape. He crept up behind John here, and a struggle ensued. They left through the front door." 

"Together?" 

Sherlock turned in a slow circle, gestured at the room. "You think they had a bit of a scuffle and then, what, both decided to go their separate ways?" 

"I get that you're worried," Lestrade said, his tone sharp. "But barking at me isn't going to help. You don't think that whoever it was ran away? Maybe John pursued? Sort of thing he might do, yeah?" 

"No," Molly said. 

Sherlock, who had opened his mouth to respond, turned to look at her. She was cradling Rosie against her chest. The little girl had calmed, no longer seemed wild-eyed and desperate.

"He wouldn't have left Rosie behind," Molly said. "That's not—not even to chase someone off. He wouldn't have left her alone in the flat. He'd have called for help." 

"Mobile's smashed," Lestrade said. 

"Then he'd have knocked on a neighbor's door," she said. "Or shouted until someone came. She's the most important thing in the world to him, and he'd never have left her behind. Not. Not willingly." 

"Still might be worth checking the stairwells," Lestrade said, but doubt had crept into his voice. "Maybe he got carried away. Had a fall and just couldn't make it back." 

Sherlock grimaced, turned away. He was missing something. Something important. Something that could explain all of this, if he could only concentrate—

"I've got to call it in, Sherlock," Lestrade said.

"No," Sherlock said. "You'll just be adding an extra layer of distraction and incompetence—" 

"If something happened, if he's been taken, we need all the resources we can get. We'll need access to CCTV footage outside the flat, we'll need to interview neighbors to see if they heard anything. It's proper procedure, Sherlock, I can't just—" 

"If something happened?" Sherlock stopped, his thoughts snagging on the word. "What do you mean, _if_ something happened?" 

Lestrade shook his head, threw a pained look in Molly's direction. Sherlock watched the exchange, uncomfortably aware that he was being left out, shielded in some way. 

"I only mean—" 

"You think John did this himself," Sherlock said, realisation dawning.

"No," Lestrade said. "I don't think that, but I do think we ought to consider—" 

"What, that he had a bit too much to drink, trashed his own flat and wandered off?" 

Lestrade looked cornered, unhappy. He shot another helpless glance in Molly's direction. "Well, he'd been in a bit of a dark place, yeah? And—" 

Thunderstruck, Sherlock turned to look at Molly. Dark place? John hadn't been meant to end up in a dark place. That was what the whole terrible mess with Culverton Smith was meant to avoid. John had left to start a new life, and Sherlock had let him go. It was Sherlock who had been left in the dark place, not John. That wasn't what was supposed to happen—

 _Go to hell._

John's flat. This miserable, dismal, dark little flat. Nothing about his surroundings said _starting over._

"No," Molly said. She bit her lip. Her expression was conflicted, but her voice firm. She shook her head, met Lestrade's gaze head-on. "No, he—he was doing better. Loads better. That's why he reached out. That's why he wanted me to come see Rosie in the first place. He knew he'd made mistakes, but he didn't want to keep cutting himself off. He was _trying._ " 

"All right," Lestrade said. He held up a placating hand. "All right, you're probably right. But I've got to consider all angles. It's my job. You know that. You _both_ know that." 

"If you're quite done," Sherlock said. "The intruder gained access via the fire escape in John's bedroom. The window is still open, the carpet damp. He surprised John on the sofa—" he stopped, looked again at the sofa, at the squashed cushions and the flipped coffee table. Thought about what it would take to sneak up on John Watson in his own home. 

"Sherlock—" 

"Shut up," Sherlock said. He stepped towards the sofa. "Not inebriated." 

"What?" 

"Shh!" 

Lestrade put his hands up and, mercifully, stopped talking. 

"He'd poured himself a drink, but hadn't consumed it. Just the one. Not inebriated. Not enough to dull the senses. But he was distracted. Distracted enough that he was unaware of someone else's presence in the flat. Distracted. Distracted by _what?_ " 

"Telly?" Molly asked. 

"No," Sherlock said. "He'd just put his daughter to bed and he'd not risk waking her. The telly might have been on, but he'd have kept the volume low. It shouldn't have been enough." 

He sat down on the sofa, put his hands forward, let them hover briefly in the space where the coffee table would have been, had it not been upended on the floor. 

"He was grabbed from behind. First instinct would have been to lurch forward. John is strong, capable of holding his own in hand-to-hand combat. He'd have brought his attacker with him, over the back of the sofa. Shins hit the coffee table, flipping it onto its side. There will be bruising." 

He stood up, paced around the coffee table, very aware of Lestrade and Molly lurking uncertainly in the periphery. 

"The struggle was brief. Vicious." Sherlock swallowed, his gaze flitting around the room as he tracked John's probable movements. Stumbling over the coffee table would have been enough to bring John roughly to his knees, his assailant falling forward with him (assuming he maintained his grip). They'd have rolled. John would have kicked out, it was a small room and his foot would have almost certainly impacted the television stand—he hesitated, looked at the shattered television where it had fallen, and yes, that fit. "The television struck the assailant on the way down. Not enough to incapacitate him, a glancing blow based on the positioning, but enough to allow John to retrieve his mobile. I suspect he was in the process of dialing 999 when—" he stopped again. 

"When?" Lestrade prompted. 

"When he was overpowered. This was not a protracted fight, it was over quickly, in a matter of seconds. John was almost certainly rendered unconscious." 

"Drugged?" 

"Likely." 

"Then what?" 

"The door was unlatched when I arrived." 

"You think the attacker dragged John out into the hallway?" 

Sherlock frowned, considered. "No, he'd not have risked being seen. Perhaps it was a slow-acting drug. A tranquiliser. He could have walked John down the hall to the lift. Anyone who saw them would just assume he'd had too much to drink, that his mate was helping him home." 

"So who—" Lestrade started.

"You're saying this was planned," Molly cut in. She was rubbing rhythmically at Rosie's back, a soothing gesture that seemed almost as much for herself as for the child. "That this wasn't just a—a robbery gone bad, or something. You're saying that someone broke in here specifically to hurt John." 

"Yes," Sherlock said. He thought about the dried water stain under Rosie's window, about John's stricken face there in the doorway at Baker Street. Thought about what it would take to frighten John enough that he'd ask for help.

Distracted. John had been distracted. Or— 

Perhaps he hadn't been distracted. Perhaps he'd been aware of a presence in the flat, but had chosen not to acknowledge it. 

Why would he do that? 

"The laptop," Sherlock said. 

"What now?" 

"John's laptop." He turned in a circle, scanned the room. "It wasn't in his bedroom, and it's not here. Where is it?" 

Lestrade blinked at him, and Sherlock huffed, dropped down into a crouch. Looked at the overturned coffee table and the sofa with its disturbed cushions. 

"He wasn't watching telly," Sherlock said. He pushed the coffee table out of the way, dropped onto his hands and knees to peer under the sofa. "Ah. There you are." 

He drew the laptop out from its shadowy hiding place. It was warm to the touch. 

"Sherlock," Lestrade said. "I have to call it in. I'm sorry. But the longer we wait—" 

"Fine," Sherlock said. He tucked the laptop under his arm, moved towards the door. He stopped as he passed the kitchen, backtracked, grabbed John's keys off of the little peg. 

"Where are you going?" Molly asked.

"To find John," he said. "Obviously." 

*

It was dark, and very warm, and John felt as though he'd been wrapped in wool. He opened his eyes, groaned, shut them again. His head ached. 

Something tugged at the edge of his consciousness. Something he needed to remember. 

He opened his eyes again. 

He was in the passenger seat of a car, his head lolling against the glass. He did not recall how he'd got there. The heater was turned all the way up, warm air pouring out through the vent. He felt vaguely nauseated. 

Headlights swept past, cutting sharply through the darkness. They were very bright, too bright, dizzying. 

"I—" John said. He swallowed, turned his head. 

Evan Bell was sitting in the driver's seat, his hands on the wheel. He turned at the sound of John's voice. His expression was oddly serene. 

"What—" John slurred. He blinked, struggled to focus. "What did you give me?" 

"Don't worry about it," Evan said.

Not worrying sounded pretty good, John thought. He shut his eyes. The warmth pulled him under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://discordantwords.tumblr.com/)!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much to anindoorkitty on Tumblr for helping me to identify John's car!

*

John's car was an Audi A3 Sportback, dark grey (Meteor Grey Pearl, to be precise), and Sherlock found it in a car park not far from the dismal apartment block. He unlocked it, slipped into the front seat and shut the door against the cold.

The air inside was stale and spoke to infrequent use. That made sense. John had always favoured public transport. The car had been more Mary's, though John had availed himself of it from time to time back in London. 

Sherlock ran his gloved fingers over the steering wheel. John had sold his flat, had rid himself of the home (and furniture) he'd shared with Mary, but he'd kept the car. There was little practical reason for him to have done so, so he must have kept it for sentimental reasons. 

Perhaps the circumstances surrounding his daughter's birth? 

Sherlock swiveled in his seat, glanced behind him. Other than a child's car seat, the rear seats were empty. Neat. Clean. Of course, the seat fabric had been professionally replaced after the—incident in question. An expensive endeavour, though quite successful. If one didn't know that Rosamund Watson had made her dramatic entrance into the world in the back seat of this particular Audi, one would never guess. 

He swallowed, looked away. He did not like to think about all of the things that John had lost. All of the things he still stood to lose, if Sherlock could not find him. 

He set the laptop on the seat next to him, lifted the lid. The screen glowed, and Sherlock hummed with satisfaction as it opened on a page of search results.

John had not been watching telly when he'd been attacked. He'd been on his laptop, and it had been kicked under the sofa in the ensuing struggle. He'd been on his laptop, scrolling through Google for information on—

Ghosts? 

Sherlock frowned, pressed the tips of his gloved fingers against his mouth. Ghosts. Why ghosts? John was neither superstitious nor particularly fanciful. 

_Ghosts_ weren't going to lead him to John. 

He scrolled through John's previous search history, confusion and dread churning sickly in his stomach.

Ghosts. 

Hallucinations. 

Nightmares. 

Apparitions. 

Sleepwalking. 

Evan Bell. 

Sherlock seized on the name, the first thing that made any sense in the alarming and inexplicable list. The name was a common one, and his preliminary search results yielded little of interest. Addresses. Business profiles. Social media accounts. Evan Bell was everyone and no one. But who was he to John?

With a little growl of frustration he pulled out his phone, fired off a text to Lestrade. 

_Who is Evan Bell? SH_

Lestrade took uncomfortably long to respond. Sherlock tried not to imagine him standing amidst the wreckage of John's flat, answering questions while police flitted around in search of evidence they would not find. 

_Who?_ eventually came Lestrade's unhelpful reply. 

Sherlock resisted the urge to strike the steering wheel with his palms. Such displays of emotion served no purpose. There was heat creeping up the back of his neck, a strangling sense of desperation and helplessness and John was _out_ there, somewhere, with someone who had _hurt_ him, and here he was, the self-purported smartest man in the world, utterly useless. 

_Find out who Evan Bell is to John_ Sherlock typed back. He dropped his phone into the passenger seat and returned his attention to the laptop. 

Friend? Coworker? Patient? Someone with a grudge? 

It had to be something more. An angry coworker or a patient with a grudge would have driven John to the police, not to Sherlock's sitting room. There was something he was missing, something tied up in all of those uncomfortable searches in John's internet history. 

Ghosts. Hallucinations. 

Evan Bell. 

Sherlock snatched up the phone again. 

_He might be dead_ he sent to Lestrade. 

His phone rang almost immediately.

"What are you on about?" Lestrade said. His voice was tinged with alarm. "Who might be dead? John?"

"No!" Sherlock said, aghast. "Evan Bell." 

Lestrade was silent for a moment. Sherlock could almost hear him trying to think. It was a painful, torturous process at the best of times, and these were not the best of times.

"You've got to talk me through it, Sherlock," Lestrade said finally. "I need more than just a name. There could be hundreds of Evan Bells out there. You've got to give me someplace to start." 

"He's a ghost," Sherlock said, looking back at John's laptop. "Someone who should be dead to John, but isn't. A former patient, or friend, or—" he trailed off, uncertain and _hating_ it. 

Lestrade made a frustrated sound. "Look, we pulled CCTV footage. You were right—" 

"Of course I was." 

"—the bloke that's got John just walked right out the front door with him. John looked drunk. He could barely stand. No one even gave them a second glance. We couldn't get a good angle on his face, and we're still trying to work out where they went, one of the cameras was out, but—" 

Sherlock hung up the phone, turned his attention back to the laptop, back to John's inexplicable search history. 

"What made you think you were seeing ghosts?"

He opened up John's email account, scrolled through the messages. There were a handful of exchanges with someone named Rahid, arranging scheduled shifts. The messages were professional, politely worded, entirely impersonal. They told him nothing.

Sherlock scrolled on, paused at a message from a real estate agent. A real estate agent _in London._ He opened it, glanced over the enclosed listings. Small, cramped little flats, but none quite as dreary as the one John currently called home. 

John had not responded to the message. 

Sherlock reluctantly clicked away, checked the outgoing messages (nothing of interest), and the deleted messages (spam, advertisements, and one borderline incoherent email from John's sister). There was nothing to, from, or concerning anyone named Evan Bell. 

He clicked on the drafts folder. There was one draft message. 

A draft message addressed to him. 

Sherlock swallowed. Thought about John standing in the doorway to his flat, looking stiff and uncomfortable and not at all sure about why he'd come. The tight smile, the unconscious twitch of his hand. The mud on his shoes, the crumbs on his jacket, the reluctant body language that screamed delay and avoidance. The way he'd bolted—like a frightened animal, and not at all like Captain John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. 

The draft was only a few hours old. John had returned home, had put his daughter to bed, poured himself a drink, and drafted an email he had not sent. 

Sherlock shut his eyes. Cursed himself for a cowardice he had not known he'd possessed until John had come into his life. Clicked on the email. 

He opened his eyes. Blinked. And then he laughed.

The email was blank. Whatever John had intended to say, whatever he'd wanted Sherlock to understand, he'd never found the words. 

Sherlock closed out of John's email, thought of that terrible day, thought of John smiling that tight forced smile and drinking his tea and looking like he wanted to crawl right out of his own skin.

 _Six 'til ten,_ John had said, and then he'd been gone. 

Sherlock had let him go.

 _Save John Watson._

He'd accepted losing John as the price of saving him, but what if that had been wrong, what if he should have— 

_Was it really worth all this, in the end?_ Mycroft had asked him, later, while the rain beat relentless against the windows and a smoky pall hung over his empty rooms. Sherlock had not answered him. He'd not known _how_ to answer. 

Emotions muddied the waters. He knew that. He'd always known that, it was why he'd endeavored to keep his head clear. It was impossible to think with the dull thud of panic throbbing behind his eyes, in his ears, choking him with every breath. 

In the end, it was always the same, wasn't it? John was in danger simply because Sherlock _cared_ about him too much. 

He picked up the phone again. Dialed.

"You never call," Mycroft said in lieu of a greeting. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

"I need information." 

"And here I thought I'd fallen victim to something so plebeian as the _butt-dial_."

"Mm," Sherlock said. "And yet you answered." 

"So I did." 

_I have failed you terribly._

"Somewhere in the alarmingly detailed file you maintain on John Watson will be a reference to the name Evan Bell. I need to know who he is." 

"Ah," Mycroft said. His tone was smug, but there was an undercurrent of weariness. "I should have known this would be about Dr Watson. And how _is_ John these days? Enjoying Chelmsford?"

Sherlock swallowed, leaned his head back against the headrest. "Missing," he said. 

"By choice?" 

"No." 

"I see." 

Silence fell. Sherlock sat and breathed and listened to his brother do the same on the other end of the line. He did not fool himself into thinking Mycroft was sedentary. He, like Sherlock, was prone to long silences but his mind was never quiet.

"You're certain you want to involve yourself in this?" Mycroft asked, finally. "After all, I was under the impression that your friendship had . . . waned." 

"That's irrelevant." 

"Oh, I think it's terribly relevant," Mycroft said. "Considering how your last attempt to save John Watson turned out." 

"As I recall, you were unable to resist interfering." 

"And as _I_ recall, you deeply resented my interference," Mycroft snapped back. 

Culverton Smith, dead in his cell. And, worse than that: the uncomfortable realisation that Mycroft had listened to the tape, that he'd sat at his desk and poured himself a glass of something expensive and listened as Sherlock's unwavering faith in John finally cracked under Smith's smothering hand. _I don't want to die._

"You interfere when it's not necessary, and you fail to interfere when it is. Remind me, what exactly is the _point_ of you?"

"Mm, I'll see what I can do," Mycroft said, affecting a mild, disinterested air. "Though I feel I must prepare you for disappointment. The _alarmingly detailed file_ you're convinced I maintain is not nearly as robust as you might imagine. Dr Watson simply doesn't hold the same interest for me that he does for you." 

A lie, and not even a particularly good one. Sherlock wondered, sometimes, why he bothered. Perhaps he simply wanted the practice. 

"Was there anything else?" Mycroft asked politely. 

Sherlock hung up the phone.

*

"Easy. _Easy._ " 

John groaned, his head lolling to the side. There were hands on his face, the palms cold and chapped and unfamiliar. 

"There you are." 

John's mouth was dry, his tongue thick and useless. He struggled to open his eyes, a wave of nausea breaking over him. His heart kicked in his chest, wild, frantic. There was something he was meant to remember. Something he was missing. Something—

He opened his eyes. He was indoors, in a room crawling with decay. The air was cold, and faint morning light glowed through dirty, cracked windows. His breath misted in front of him. 

He jolted, jerked forward in his seat. He did not go far. His wrists and ankles were bound. The chair beneath him creaked, held firm. It was high-backed, wooden. It felt old. It felt _sturdy._

"The fuck?" 

Evan Bell stood in front of him, wearing a thick winter coat ( _frayed,_ Sherlock's voice piped up, _and look at the dirt on his collar_ ). 

John's vision swam. 

"What the hell is going on?" he managed. Blood pounded in his ears. Everything was too bright, too close, too loud. 

He'd been—he'd been on the sofa. He'd been trying to write an email to Sherlock, he'd been trying to explain, trying to—trying to—

But no, that hadn't been it. Not all of it. He'd been on the sofa, but only after he'd put Rosie to bed. Rosie. _Rosie._

"My daughter," John said. He lifted his head, breathing hard through his nose. The air was bitter cold, and his cheeks stung. "Where's my daughter?" 

"Not here." 

"What have you done with her?" 

"Nothing," Evan said. "She's where you left her." 

"She's not even two years old," John said. He felt sick. He tugged at his restraints, hard plastic biting into the flesh of his wrists. He could not lift his hands from the armrests. The world shimmered in and out of focus. 

Evan looked untroubled. He was older than John remembered him, his face lined and deeply weathered in the dim light. His hair was grizzled, unkempt, badly in need of a cut. There was something unfamiliar in the twist of his mouth, in the slope of his nose, and the air left John all in a rush as he realised. 

"You're not," he said, struggling to form the words. "You're not him. You're not Evan Bell." 

"No," the man said, his expression tightening. "I'm not." 

John shut his eyes against another wave of nausea. His breath rasped in his chest. "Who are you? Why are you doing this?" 

The man looked at him for a long moment without answering. 

John swallowed hard. His vision swam. "What did you give me?" 

"Xylazine," he said. "It's a horse tranquiliser. But don't worry, I adjusted the dose." 

"Cheers," John said darkly. He clenched his fists, struggled to stay focused. 

"Evan never mentioned me," the man said. It was not a question. 

"I don't—" John swallowed again, shook his head. "I haven't seen Evan Bell in years. He. He died. He—" he cut himself off, forced himself to look at the man in front of him. 

_Obvious,_ Sherlock's voice whispered in his head. 

"You're his brother." 

"Arthur." 

"Arthur," John repeated. He felt helplessly, hopelessly at sea. "I don't know why I'm here." 

"You're here because you killed my brother." 

John laughed, a sharp, startled sound. "You've got to be kidding me." 

"You said it yourself." 

"I don't know what—" 

"I told you that you were going to be fine, and you weren't." Bell looked at him with flat eyes and a downturned mouth. 

His words. His own words, spoken in the hush of his darkened bedroom, to the spectre in the shadows. 

"You died on my watch, and I think that I could have stopped it." 

"That wasn't," John said, licking dry lips, "a confession." 

"Wasn't it?" 

"No, it was—" John stopped, shook his head. Thought about Evan Bell as he'd last seen him, dead on the ground with his blue eyes wide. Thought of the way his ghost had haunted John's steps for weeks after, until one day he'd just been gone. John had lost other friends in Afghanistan, good friends, he'd had men die in his arms, but none of them had hit him quite like Evan. 

_Only the one you felt guilty about._

"I guess it was," John amended. He let his head drop, his chin brushing against his chest. "A confession. I guess it was. But I didn't—it's not what you're thinking." 

"You have no idea what I'm thinking." 

John smiled without humour, looked down pointedly as he tugged at his restraints. "I think I might." 

Arthur Bell studied him for a moment, turned away, went to the window. The weak sunlight illuminated his face through the dirty glass. "It's snowing," he said. "The road will be impassable in a few hours." 

John swallowed, said nothing. It had not been snowing in Chelmsford. 

Bell turned away from the window, breathed out. John looked past him at the peeling wallpaper, at the wooden floorboards sagging under years of neglect.

"Where are we?" John asked, his voice steady. 

"Home," Bell said. 

"Where is home?" 

Bell smiled at him. It was an uncomfortable smile, too many teeth. "I wanted you to see." 

"See what?" 

"What you did." Bell spread his arms, turned in a circle. "Look." 

John looked. There was a dark patch on the ceiling, sagging and dripping. The floorboards creaked and groaned in protest beneath Bell's feet. There was a crumbling stone fireplace in the corner, cold and dark and cobwebbed. 

It had once been a fine home, he thought. But there had been years of neglect. Enough to render it uninhabitable, unsound. 

Bell followed his gaze up to the dark patch on the ceiling. "The roof caved in last winter." 

"There's been flooding," John said, finally. 

Bell turned back to him. "Yes," he agreed. "The house can't be saved. The floor—" he hopped in place, the boards beneath him complaining and swaying, "—is compromised. There's rot in the beams. The foundation's cracked." 

"I'm sorry," John said.

"We were supposed to run the farm together," Bell said. "Did you know that? After our father died. That's what he wanted for us."

John shut his eyes, thought about Evan Bell, the way he'd been when he was still alive. Young and wide-eyed and terribly naive. It was not hard to imagine him growing up here, in this place. 

"He was going to come back," Bell said. "That's what he told me. He was going to go—he was going to go _over there,_ but then he was going to come back. And we were going to run this place together." 

"But he never came back," John said. He opened his eyes, met Bell's unhappy gaze. "He never came back because he died. I was there with him. I—I know—" 

"He wrote home," Bell said. "Only a few letters, but it was enough. It meant something to our parents. To hear from him." 

"Yes," John said, still not quite able to track the conversation, not quite sure where it was headed. Nowhere good, he supposed. 

"He wrote about you." 

Shit. 

"I was his friend," John said. 

"He wrote home and told us he wasn't worried. Because he had you. Because you'd promised to look after him." Bell looked down at his hands. 

John shut his eyes. He had promised. It had been a naive, hopeful sort of promise. He hadn't quite known what it would be like, then. He'd not quite grasped all of the ways things could go wrong. 

"And then we didn't get any more letters," Bell said.

"I know," John said, and he thought again of Evan as he'd last seen him. Evan, on the ground with his eyes wide open. There had been no peace in his expression, no comfort. "I'm sorry." 

Bell fidgeted with his coat, crumpling the heavy fabric in his fists. "This all—things fell apart, here. I couldn't do it on my own." 

"I'm—" John's voice caught. He swallowed, hard, tried again. "I'm sorry that you had to." 

"I hadn't thought about you in years, you know," Bell said. "I always just thought you'd died over there too." 

John smiled tightly. In a way, he thought, he had. But not in any way that would matter to Arthur Bell. 

"Then I saw you in that shop. And you had your little girl, and you were smiling. And you looked me dead in the eye and you called me his name." 

"I thought," John said, "that you were him." He smiled tightly, aware of how little sense that made, that there was no real way to explain that he'd been living with ghosts for so long that the arrival of one more had not been any real surprise.

"John Watson," Bell said. "Returned from the war right as rain. Out there, living his life. Happy. While my brother came home in a box." 

John smiled again, because Arthur Bell didn't know the half of it. He did not bother to correct him. Arthur would not care about the bullet that had sent John home, about the bleak days and weeks that had followed. Nor would he care about Sherlock, about Mary, about the life that John had built and lost. The life he'd walked away from. 

He was not happy. He had not been happy for a long time. He could not quite pinpoint the moment that it had happened, but he thought it was somewhere around the time he realised that Mary had put a bullet in Sherlock's chest. 

Everything after that had been merely survival. 

He was not going to beg for his life. He'd had more chances than most, and he'd squandered them. Again and again and again. 

"So is that what this is, hm?" John asked instead. "Revenge?" 

It was funny in a way, he thought. Here he was, tied to a chair, about to die at someone else's hand, and it had nothing at all to do with Sherlock Holmes. 

Except it had everything to do with Sherlock Holmes, in a way. 

He wasn't Sherlock, not even close, but he could see it unspooling before him in slow motion, all of the things that had happened to bring him to this point. A chance encounter in the shops just before Christmas, the glimpse of a face like a ghost from the past. Even further back—a chance encounter on a bus with a pretty woman, the deeply buried desire to hurt his wife as much as she'd hurt him. A chance encounter in the park with an old schoolmate, an introduction to a potential flatmate. All of it, back and back and back, little choices that had led him here. 

Sherlock's blood on a morgue floor, those sad and haunted eyes. 

"I just—" Bell paused, looked at him. There were years of sadness etched into the lines of his face. How John had ever mistaken him for Evan, who had died young and unmarred, he did not know. "I just wanted you to see." 

"I see," John said, because he did. He thought of Rosie, alone in her cot with no one to come for her. She'd be crying. She'd be hungry. He was all she had, and she deserved better than that. Someone would hear her. Someone would—surely someone would go to her. 

"I just," Bell said again. "I just wanted you to see. What you did." 

John pulled again at the restraints. His shoulder ached. His heart ached too. "I didn't do this." 

He thought of Sherlock, on the ground. _I killed his wife._

He'd let Sherlock live with that for a full year. He'd uprooted his own life, he'd dragged his daughter away from the only people she'd ever known, and yet he'd never quite thought about what that might have done to Sherlock. Even after Molly had told him, he still hadn't thought—

 _There are more ways than one to lose someone._

"You don't see it," Bell said. "You don't. Not yet. But you will." 

"Arthur—" John started.

"No," Bell said. "You're going to sit there, and you're going to wait. You're going to wait, and wait, and _wait,_ while this all falls down around you. And then maybe you'll see." 

He turned, picked his way across the sagging and creaking floor. 

"Wait," John said. "Don't." 

Bell paused in the doorway, his shoulders slumped. Then he continued on. John listened as his footsteps receded. Outside, the rumble of an engine, the wet muted crunch of tires on snow. 

Silence fell, heavy and grim. The air was very cold. John was overly aware of his own heartbeat, the throb of his pulse in his veins, the rasp of his own breath in his throat. He was not wearing a coat. He could not feel his fingers. 

The old house creaked and groaned around him. Water dripped, steady and determined, somewhere out of sight. He could not see much through the dirty window, not from where he'd been left in the middle of the room, but he could hear the wind whistling against cracked glass. 

Snow.

The North Pennines, John thought. That's what Evan had once told him. He'd grown up on his family farm in the North Pennines. 

Christ, he was hundreds of miles from Chelmsford. No one would ever think to look for him here. It would take Sherlock Holmes to figure out where he'd gone, and that—well. That wasn't going to happen. 

He thought about Evan Bell—about the way he'd been when he was alive, not how he'd died. It was strange. He'd not thought about the good parts of Evan in a long time. 

He'd been one of the first friends John had made after enlisting. He'd had a high-pitched, infectious laugh that had pissed off their commanding officer to no end. Evan had seemed younger than his years, had possessed a strange sort of innocence that had made John want to shield him from the worst of the world. They'd made a pact to watch each other's backs, but John had, even then, suspected that he'd be the one doing most of the watching. 

He'd done a shit job of it. 

Evan had not wanted to go to war. Evan had simply wanted to get away, had wanted to squirm out from beneath the weight of familial expectations. The army had given him a chance to do that. But he'd been ill-suited for it, right from the start. 

John shut his eyes, leaned his head back. His muscles trembled. Cold, fatigue, shock—it didn't really matter. He thought perhaps he'd succumb to exposure long before dehydration or starvation took him. He'd lost feeling in his toes. 

There was some relief in it, he thought. He'd been drawing breath without really living for a long time now. The choice had been taken out of his hands. All he had to do now was wait. 

"I'm sorry, Rosie," he said. She'd be all right. He had to believe she'd be all right. Better off without him.

He wished he'd sent that message to Sherlock. He wished he'd written it down, all of it, everything he'd ever wanted to say. He'd chickened out, he'd fucked it up, all of it, and he regretted all of the chances he'd failed to take to make things right. 

He shivered again. Lifted his head, looked at the peeling wallpaper. It had moulded over in parts. He could no longer tell what colour it had been. 

Outside, the wind howled. 

He wondered when he'd be found, and what would be left of him. Unless Arthur Bell tipped someone off as to what had happened, it might be a very long time. 

He imagined himself long dead, desiccated, a stiff and withered display tied to a chair in the middle of a rotting room. Sherlock, in his long coat with the collar up, studying him from the doorway. 

_He wasn't murdered,_ Sherlock said, circling around, skirting ever closer but not touching. His voice was flat, his face expressionless. _There are abrasions on the wrists and ankles from the restraints, but the damage is limited. He barely struggled._

The sound of his voice was comforting, familiar and long-missed. 

_He was drugged. Here—you can see where the needle entered his neck._ Sherlock's fingers ghosted along the side of John's neck. He shivered. _There was a struggle. The tip of the needle broke off in his skin. He was almost certainly unconscious while being transported._

Sherlock stepped back, frowned down at him. There was a wrinkle between his brows, the one that only appeared when he was truly perplexed, the one that John had always found just a little bit charming. _But that doesn't explain the condition of the body, or why he made no effort to free himself. The effects would have worn off long before he succumbed. But he didn't fight. Why?_

"Why should I?" John said. He laughed, a hollow, hoarse sound.

 _Because it's been far too long since you've fought for something,_ Sherlock snarled, his face suddenly right in front of John's. The perplexed expression was gone, replaced by a twisted anger John had only ever glimpsed once or twice, and never directed at him. 

Not even when he'd deserved it. 

_There are more ways than one to lose someone._

He'd thanked Molly for her honesty, but he hadn't really listened to her. She'd look after his daughter, he thought. She'd clean up another one of his messes. But was that really what he wanted? After everything, was that really the best he could do? 

_John,_ Sherlock said, his face close, so close that John would have been able to taste his breath if he'd really been there. _Why didn't you fight?_

"All right," John said, and he laughed again. It emerged a little wild, a little unhinged, but that was all right. There was no one to hear him but his ghosts. "You win. We'll do it your way." 

He jerked his hands. The plastic bit deep. Blood ran hot down chilled flesh. 

John rocked where he sat, building momentum, the heavy chair wobbling on wooden legs. The floor creaked and swayed beneath him. 

He threw himself backwards, the chair tipping and crashing over, cracking against the floor and—fucking hell—the damn thing _still_ wouldn't break—

The floor gave a great, shuddering groan and caved in. John barely had time to draw in a shocked breath, his stomach lurching as he dropped. 

Darkness swallowed him.


	9. Chapter 9

*

Pain came first. Then the cold, seeping slow and steady through his limbs. 

John opened his eyes. For a moment he lay stunned, blinking in the dark. Everything hurt. His surroundings were unfamiliar, disorienting. 

There was a jagged hole in the ceiling above him. Dust danced in weak, distant shafts of light. 

He was lying in something wet. It lapped against his back, trickled down his neck. He sucked in a pained breath, struggled to move his limbs. For a moment there was pain and panic as his arms refused to cooperate, numb fingers flexing and grasping, and then he remembered. 

The chair. The zip ties. 

He sucked in a breath, cautiously tried again. 

The back of the chair had shattered but the armrests remained intact, his hands still thoroughly bound. The heavy wood dragged along the wet ground behind him like sodden wings. His head throbbed. He could not quite get enough momentum to sit up. 

His teeth chattered and he struggled for another breath. His chest hurt. His hair clung, wet and cold, to his skull. 

The basement. He must have—he'd fallen through the floor. He was in the basement, the _partially-flooded_ basement, and he was still tied to the bloody fucking chair. 

John laughed. He could not help himself. It bubbled up from his chest, forced its way up his throat, violent, uncontrollable. 

This. This was what he got for trying. He was still going to die, but now he was going to die soaking wet and shivering in the dark. Fantastic. Fan-fucking-tastic. 

He shut his eyes, let his head drop back down into the thin pool of frigid water. Christ, why couldn't he just have hit his head a little harder on the way down? 

_Please God, let me live,_ he'd thought, years ago, his blood spilling out under the unforgiving Afghan sun. He'd not make the mistake of begging again. 

Something creaked. 

He opened his eyes, looked up at the shattered ceiling, half-convinced that the rest of it was going to cave in on him. But the sound had not come from above him, it had—

There was movement behind him, a heavy thrashing and splashing. Alarmed, John twisted on the ground, strained to see through the shadows. 

Something was struggling through the dark towards him. 

Fear knifed through John's chest even as the shape edged closer, unfamiliar lines coalescing into something recognisable: a tall figure in a long coat. 

Sherlock. 

John smiled, sagged back down, strangely relieved. He was glad his subconscious had elected to give him Sherlock instead of Mary, in the end. He'd already said everything he needed to say to Mary.

"John," Sherlock said, his voice low and urgent. He crouched down, the hem of his coat dragging carelessly in the water. He pressed one gloved hand against John's cheek. He felt remarkably solid. 

"I'm sorry," John said. He swallowed, met Sherlock's gaze. He did not want to close his eyes, but his head hurt. He was so very, very cold. There were things he'd wanted to say, though, and he thought he ought to say them. Even if he was only speaking to his own ghost. "I'm so sorry. I was a coward. I should have—I should have told you—" 

"Shut up," Sherlock said. He sounded distressed. 

John struggled to open his eyes. He was not quite sure when he'd let them close. Sherlock's face was pale and pinched, his eyes wide and colourless in the shadows. 

"Should have told you," John said again. His teeth chattered, and he could not quite get the words out. "Sorry. Should have. I should have—I wanted—" 

"Is anything broken?" Sherlock's hands were on his shoulders, his arms, sliding down his sides. Back up to cradle his face, his neck. 

"What?" John blinked, then let his eyes slip shut.

"Is anything _broken?_ " Sherlock hissed. "You know I hate repeating myself—John. John!" 

John grimaced, cringed away as the leather-clad hand against his face slapped at him. He opened his eyes. His head throbbed.

"I need to know if anything is broken," Sherlock said. His voice sounded like it had been scraped raw. "Can I move you?" 

"What?"

"Is it safe to move you? I need to get you someplace warm." 

John blinked again, struggled to focus. Sherlock swam in and out of view. He was wide-eyed and wild-haired, his coat damp and covered in a dusting of wet snow. His breath came fast, his chest rising and falling in a heaving, panicked rhythm. 

"You're here." 

"Ye-es," Sherlock said. 

"You're really here. Not just. Not—" John stopped, licked his lips. They were dry. The rest of him was drenched, but his lips were dry. He forced himself to look at Sherlock. "How the _fuck—_?" 

Sherlock looked strangely stricken. He shook his head. 

"My hands," John managed. He tore his gaze away from Sherlock, struggled against his bindings. "The chair. It must have broken when I fell, but I'm still—" 

Sherlock's hands roamed again, sliding down John's arms, pausing at the plastic ties that had chewed his wrists raw. The touch of his gloved fingers was achingly gentle. "It will be uncomfortable, but you should be able to sit up. I'll cut you loose." 

His hands slipped behind John's head again, careful, so very careful.

With Sherlock's help, John rolled onto his side, then sat up. The wounded chair dragged behind him, heavy and pulling painfully at his wrists, his ankles.

Sherlock fumbled with something in his pocket. There was a soft snicking sound, and then a pressure at John's wrist. The plastic tie fell away. He freed John's other hand, then bent to work on his ankles. 

John groaned, flexed his hands. His fingers were numb, pale and bloodless. How much was due to cold and how much to compromised circulation he could not be sure of in the dark. His wrists stung. 

"Sherlock," he said. The name felt strange in his mouth. 

Sherlock sat back on his heels, looked at him. His face gave nothing away.

There were things, John thought. Things he needed to say. Somehow he still hadn't found a way to say them. 

"There are stairs," Sherlock said. "Over there. Behind you. They're partially collapsed, but—" 

His voice trailed off. There was no need for him to finish his sentence. The stairs were their best option. Possibly the only option. They certainly couldn't go up through the ceiling. 

"That's how you got down here?" he asked.

Sherlock smiled, a crooked, small thing. "Seemed wiser than throwing myself through the floor." 

John huffed out a laugh, knocked his shoulder against Sherlock's. The motion was natural, instinctive, and it triggered a nostalgia so strong it took his breath away. "My way was faster." 

Sherlock hummed, amused. 

"Sherlock," John said. He swallowed, choking on his own words. 

"The house isn't sound," Sherlock said, and his voice had sobered somewhat. "There are burst pipes. That's what caused all of this—" he gestured vaguely to the puddles of water on the ground, murky and dark. "The floor's uneven. The water's deeper over there, by the stairs." 

"Fantastic," John said. He rubbed at his wrists. His fingers had started to tingle as the blood rushed back. 

"The roof is partially caved in. With the snow—" 

John lifted his head, listened to the creaking groans of abused wood, the patter of distant water. Thought about the snow on Sherlock's shoulders, and Arthur Bell at the window looking out at the storm. "We need to get out of here," he said. "Before the whole thing comes down on our heads." 

Sherlock stood, then stooped down to help John to his feet. He stayed close, his arm looped around John's waist, supporting him. 

"All right?" Sherlock asked. He was breathing hard. 

John hesitated, took stock. He was cold, and aching. "A little beat-up," he admitted.

"Come on." 

They went together, sloshing through ankle-high water. John leaned hard against Sherlock, fought to keep his balance, his steps clumsy and numbed. The floor dipped the closer they got to the stairs, frigid water climbing up John's shins. 

The stairs were rotted and ramshackle, sagging and swaying. John looked at them, could imagine rusted nails pulling away from wet wood. 

"Shit," he said. 

"Quite," Sherlock agreed. And up they went, together, Sherlock's fingers digging painfully into his side, his own frozen hands feeling along wet and peeling wallpaper. The stairs groaned wetly, but held.

They crept together down a long hall, and John paused in a doorway to look in at the room he'd nearly died in. 

There was a gaping hole in the floor where he'd fallen, the floorboards jagged and splintered. Snow had built up against the window glass at the far wall, blotting out the daylight. 

"We can't stay here," Sherlock said. His breath steamed in front of him. 

"I don't want to," John said. He swallowed hard when he realised he meant it. 

They went together down the hall and through the front door.

John blinked as his eyes adjusted. The sky was grey, the landscape stark white. An icy wind whipped the wet tips of his hair, hard little pellets of snow lashing against his skin. 

"Jesus," he said. 

"Come on," Sherlock said, pulling at him.

They staggered together through the snow, John squinting against the cutting wind. He could no longer feel his face. Sherlock seemed to have some idea where they were headed, and John focused on putting one foot in front of the other, trusting the steady presence at his side. 

"Here," Sherlock said, his voice swallowed by the wind. He'd stopped at a partially snow-covered lump. 

John stared at it for a moment, not quite comprehending. It looked like his car. But _how_ —?

"Get in!" Sherlock shouted. He wrenched at the door, snow falling away where it had accumulated. 

John did not need further encouragement. He scrambled into the passenger seat, slammed the door behind him. Sat, gasping and shivering, as Sherlock turned the key in the ignition. 

Heat blasted from the vents, and John groaned as he held out his hands. His entire body shook. Water ran in icy rivulets down his back. 

"How?" he asked through chattering teeth. 

"You weren't using it," Sherlock said, and stepped on the gas. The car leapt forward, then floundered, wheels spinning uselessly, failing to gain traction on the snow-slick path. The engine whined. 

Sherlock glanced at him, then away. He pressed his lips together, his expression grim. His hair was damp, beads of melting snow dripping from the ends of his curls. 

He put the car in reverse, jolted backwards, then shifted forwards again. Once more the car jerked ahead and then stalled. 

"We're stuck," John said. He shivered harder, his wet shirt clinging to chilled skin. 

"Must you feel the need to state the obvious?" Sherlock said, and stepped on the gas again. There was a hint of something panicked, something desperate in his clipped tone. 

The engine screamed, and the rear of the car shimmied and fishtailed, but still they did not move. 

Sherlock took his foot off the gas and hunched, breathing hard, over the steering wheel. 

John stared at him. It had grown uncomfortable, but he could not quite bring himself to look away. Sherlock looked exhausted, worried and unhappy. Without lifting his head, he reached down to shift the car into reverse yet again. 

"Sherlock," John said. He moved without thinking, covered Sherlock's hand with his own.

Sherlock stilled. 

John was terribly aware of the gentle whirr of the car heater, the rumble of the idling engine, the distant moan of the wind outside. Sleety snow chattered against the window glass and he took steady breaths and felt his own pulse jumping in his throat. 

Sherlock did not move. 

"We're stuck," John said. He was still shivering. He felt like he might never stop. "We're just. We're just going to have to wait it out." 

Sherlock blinked once, a slow languid motion. He did not look away from the steering wheel. 

"We're just going to have to wait," John said again. He sniffed, looked down at the gear shift, at his bare hand cupped over Sherlock's gloved one. 

"Take off your clothes," Sherlock said. 

John blinked, took his hand away. "Sorry. What?" 

"Your _clothes_ ," Sherlock said, and suddenly seemed galvanized into motion. He threw open the car door and disappeared into the swirling storm.

John sat stunned for a moment, still shivering in spite of the heat pouring out of the vents. Then he opened his own door. 

"Sherlock!" he shouted. Wind buffeted his face. 

"Stay in the car!" Sherlock called back.

"Yeah, no, I don't think so," John said, and stepped out into the snow. He kept a hand on the side of the car, put his head down, carefully waded towards Sherlock's voice. 

Sherlock was crouched behind the car, a whirlwind of motion, coat flapping. He looked up at John's approach, his expression flitting between exasperation and a sort of raw panic that John had rarely ever glimpsed on his face. "Get back in the car!"

"What the hell are you doing?" 

"Clearing a space around the tailpipe. You don't want to asphyxiate, do you?" He stood up, lurched towards John, his shoes slipping in the slushy mess on the ground. "Go!"

John went. He dropped back into the passenger seat, slammed the door behind him, watched snowflakes melt against the sodden fabric of his jeans. 

The rear door opened. 

John twisted in his seat as Sherlock began yanking at straps and buckles, wrenching Rosie's empty car seat free. 

"Hey—" John started. 

Sherlock threw the seat out into the drifting snow, slammed the rear door. He then hurried around the front of the car, briefly illuminated in the headlights. 

"Sherlock, what the _hell_ —?" John started as Sherlock opened the door and dropped into the driver's seat.

"Get in the backseat," Sherlock said. His face was flushed and wind-chilled, and he was breathing hard. Water beaded up at the tip of his nose and he sniffed, swiping at it. When he spoke again, his voice was sharp and impatient. "And take off those clothes. I already told you that." 

"I'm not—" 

"They're soaked through," Sherlock said. "If we're stuck here, if we have to wait, you can't—" he stopped, let out a frustrated breath. "There's a blanket in the back. Wrap yourself in that." 

John opened his mouth to argue, instead betrayed himself with another full-body shiver. His shirt clung to him, wet and frigid against his skin. His jeans were sodden, his shoes squelching with every move. He could not deny the chill that had seeped into his bones. 

He held Sherlock's gaze for a moment, then looked down. Nodded. 

With some effort, he dragged himself over the center console, settled into the back seat. Set to work untying his shoes. 

"Last time someone told me to take off all my clothes in the backseat of a car, I had a lot more fun," he said, hoping to lighten the mood.

Sherlock did not respond. 

John supposed that had been the wrong way to go about trying to lighten the mood with Sherlock. 

He continued undressing in silence, wrapped himself in the scratchy wool blanket he'd kept in the back for emergencies. (Though the "emergencies" he'd envisioned had been more of the Rosie-versus-a-sticky-ice-lolly, or perhaps catastrophic-nappy-failure variety.) 

Sherlock sat stiff-shouldered in the driver's seat. He did not turn his head. He did not speak. He barely seemed to breathe. 

John shook out his wet shirt, and jeans, and socks. Dropped them in the front seat he'd vacated. He did not remove his pants. They were damp, and cold, but there were only so many indignities one man could suffer in a single day. 

He was shivering in earnest now, could not stop his teeth from chattering together. It was due to shock as much as cold, he supposed. That did not make the experience any more pleasant. 

Sherlock had still not moved.

"Sherlock?" John asked, finally, when the silence had grown heavy and worrisome. 

"We can't leave the car running, we'll run out of petrol. We need to conserve heat." Sherlock's voice was distant, resigned. He still had his hands on the wheel. 

"All right," John said. He looked out the window. All he could see was swirling snow. Rosie's car seat had disappeared. He swallowed, pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders. His head still ached, but the pain had receded to a dull throb. 

Sherlock inhaled, as if he meant to speak. The moment stretched on. He said nothing. 

John studied the rigid line of his shoulders, the damp curls of his storm-tangled hair. He ought to say something, he knew. He had things to say. 

Sherlock turned off the engine. 

The sudden silence was striking. Outside, the storm raged on. 

John shivered. He felt the loss of heat keenly. 

Sherlock shifted where he sat, the fabric of his coat rasping against his seat. John could hear him breathing; slow, steady breaths. 

For a moment there was nothing more than the quiet sound of Sherlock breathing and the shrieking gusts of the storm outside. Then Sherlock moved, leaning forward, ducking out of sight. 

John looked away, stared hard at the window. He did not know how long the storm was expected to last. He hadn't made a habit of checking the weather in Cumbria. There'd been no reason to. 

"Molly has your daughter," Sherlock said, his voice slightly muffled. He was struggling with something, breathing hard with the effort. He did not lift his head. 

John's heart wrenched at the thought of Rosie, Rosie who he'd put down to sleep in her cot and who would surely have been roused by the sound of a struggle. Rosie, who had been left behind. He'd almost given up without a fight. Another parent, dying on her.

"Oh," he said. His voice caught. "That's—good. Good." 

"She seemed comfortable with Molly." 

"Yeah, she—" John hesitated. He looked back at the window, at the swirling snow. His eyes burned with shame, but he could not pinpoint any clear cause. He cleared his throat, embarrassed. "Molly is. Um. She's a good friend." 

Sherlock did not respond, just went on rustling down out of sight. 

"Erm," John said. "Your phone. Could I—?" 

"I've already tried. There's no service." 

"Right," John said. So they were well and truly stuck. At least he was not dying in a puddle of stagnant water in the basement of a decaying farmhouse. There was that much to be grateful for. 

Sherlock sat up. He'd shrugged off his coat and suit jacket, was down to just his shirtsleeves. 

John looked at him. He could not seem to stop looking. 

"Um," Sherlock said, and then he was climbing over the console, awkwardly clambering into the back seat with his too-long limbs. His knee cracked against John's. 

His trousers were damp almost up to his knees. His feet were bare. 

"What are you—?" John ducked an errant elbow. 

"You're a doctor," Sherlock snapped, stubbornly avoiding John's gaze. "Work it out." He dropped down into the seat next to John. Hesitated, just a moment, before wrapping an arm around John's shoulders. 

"Oi—" 

"Just—" 

Sherlock pressed, and nudged, and shoved, and John found himself arranged on his side in the cramped space, facing the front seats. Sherlock was behind him, his back against the seatrests, his front—his front pressed all along John's back.

John could not recall ever having been spooned in such a way that managed to feel both aggressive and hesitant all at once. Though perhaps he'd be better off not thinking of it as _spooning_ in the first place. They were keeping warm. That was all. 

Sherlock swept his coat up and over them both. The hem was wet, and John hissed as cold wool brushed against his bare leg. He tucked his feet up, pulled the thin blanket closer around himself. 

"It's efficient," Sherlock said. His voice was clipped, a little defensive.

"No, it's—" John said, realising that Sherlock must have misconstrued his hiss of discomfort. "It's fine." 

Sherlock said nothing. It was disconcerting, all of the silence.

John focused on his own breathing, on the warm and unexpectedly comforting weight of Sherlock's arm across his chest, holding him securely in place. The wool collar of Sherlock's coat, damp with its dusting of snow, tickling up against his chin. 

It would be even more efficient, John thought, if Sherlock were to strip down entirely. If they were to press, skin-to-skin, beneath both the wool blanket and heavy coat. If Sherlock could dry off and warm up without wet clothes clinging to his legs. 

He could not bring himself to say that. 

"How the hell did you find me?" he asked, finally.

He felt, rather than heard, Sherlock swallow behind him. The proximity was terribly intimate. If this had happened—before—he supposed he'd have been cracking all sorts of jokes to break the tension. 

"You know my methods." 

"Yeah, but come on." 

Sherlock was silent for a time. Then he sighed. "I read your email." 

"I never sent that email." 

"Mm. When has that ever stopped me?" 

John huffed out a breath, amused in spite of himself. "You know I didn't actually write anything in that email." 

Sherlock was silent again, long enough that John supposed he wasn't going to respond. When he finally spoke, his voice was low. "You didn't have to." 

John swallowed hard. A year, he thought. An entire year of his life, wasted. An entire year spent wishing he could find the words to fix what he'd broken. He hadn't even tried. 

And still, Sherlock had come for him. 

_Save John Watson._

Was there really anything worth saving? 

"Why are you here?" John spoke quietly, instinctively trying to match his tone to Sherlock's. 

Sherlock shifted behind him. "I should think that's obvious." 

"No," John said. He smiled tightly, aware that Sherlock could not see his expression. "I mean—not—I know _what_ you're doing here. Thank you, by the way. But I don't. I don't know _why._ " 

Sherlock's breath hissed through his teeth. "I should think that's obvious as well." 

John shut his eyes. "Sherlock—" 

"I miscalculated." 

John opened his eyes. He did not turn around. 

"When you arrived at Baker Street, I had no idea your situation was quite so dire. I made assumptions about the degree of urgency. Assumptions that would allow me to time my arrival to guarantee maximum receptiveness." 

"Receptiveness," John said. It took a moment to sink in. "You mean my receptiveness. My—you followed me?" 

"No," Sherlock said. "If I'd followed you, all of this could have been avoided." 

"Then what—?" 

Sherlock laughed. It was not a happy sound. John could not recall ever hearing him sound quite so bitter. "I elected not to follow you. You're defensive when cornered, and you'd have been unlikely to reveal the source of your distress under those circumstances. I estimated that by the time you'd returned home on the train and conducted your usual evening routine you'd have begun to regret travelling all the way to London with nothing to show for your efforts." 

"And then you'd knock on the door and save the day." 

"Something like that." 

John exhaled through his nose. Smiled. "That's—" 

"Inexcusable." 

"Brilliant," John said. "I was going to say brilliant. Everything you—all of it. It was spot-on. Yeah? I was. I was regretting it. Regretting that I hadn't, that I couldn't—" he stopped, let out a rueful laugh. "I put Rosie to bed and poured myself a drink. I was going to write to you. I wanted—well—clearly that didn't happen. But. If you'd knocked on the door, it would have been. Good. Yeah." 

"I was too late." 

"Yeah, well, I can only assume if you knew I was about to be kidnapped you'd have caught an earlier train." 

Sherlock tensed up behind him, the pattern of his breaths changing, and it took John a moment to realise he was stifling laughter. 

John's mouth curled up in a smile. Christ, they were a pair. 

"I was a bit—surprised," Sherlock said delicately. 

"Yes, well, so was I." 

And then they were both laughing, muffled giggles that seemed overloud in the cramped space. John's eyes stung. His breath had gone shaky. 

He'd missed this. All of it. He'd missed Sherlock terribly. He'd never known anyone on earth quite like him. They just—they just fit. 

And he'd thrown it away. He'd had chance after chance after chance, and he'd wasted them all. 

The laughter died off. The silence that rushed in to fill the void was terribly loud. 

John was very conscious of the steady thump of his own heart, the persistent rise and fall of his chest. He was alive. Somehow, he was still alive. Because of Sherlock. 

"Why are you here?" John asked him again. He was not quite sure he wanted to hear the answer. He was not quite sure he could bear _not_ to hear it.

"What do you mean? Of course I'm here. Why wouldn't I be here?" 

John shut his eyes again. "Because I—" 

"You asked for my help. Well. Not in so many words. But you know what I mean." 

"And that's—that's all it took? Me, needing your help?" 

Sherlock shifted behind John, huffed out a frustrated breath. "You're not making any sense. Of course that's all it took. I told you, John, I will always be there for you." 

The vow. That fucking vow, the one Sherlock had made with his eyes gleaming in the candlelight, Mary in John's arms on the dance floor. The vow John had thrown in his face. 

"After everything," John said. His voice broke and he paused. "Even after—" 

"John," Sherlock's arm tightened around his chest. 

"No," John said. He very stubbornly kept his eyes fixed ahead, watching the snow drift and pile on the windshield. It was easier not to look at Sherlock, to pretend he was just another ghost, hovering just out of sight. "It's not. It's not the vow. Don't try to tell me that. People don't just do this, you know? It doesn't matter what was said in front of a roomful of strangers, they don't just drop everything and run off after someone who—someone who walked out on them." 

"Don't they?" 

"No." 

Outside, the wind shrieked and howled. John shut his eyes and tried not to think about Mary. She'd walked out on him, after all. She'd walked out on him, and he'd followed. Eventually. Reluctantly.

_I went halfway around the world to bring you home, and I was going to tell you it was over._

Sherlock with his stupid, noble vow. He took it seriously. No one took vows seriously anymore. They were just nice words you said. Something like forty percent of marriages ended in divorce. But Sherlock didn't—he didn't _get_ things like that. He wouldn't see the point of making a vow if he wasn't going to keep it, would he? Not Sherlock. 

"I think it can be said that I am utter rubbish at keeping vows," Sherlock said quietly. 

"No," John said. "I don't think that can be said at all." 

Sherlock breathed out, and warm air whispered past John's ear. 

He had done this. He had taken his guilt, his grief, and pushed it off onto Sherlock, had let him bear the weight of responsibility for Mary's death. It was easy, sometimes, to pretend that Sherlock was unfeeling, uncaring, but he wasn't. Christ. He wasn't. And John knew that. He'd always known that. 

"I'm sorry about Mary," Sherlock said. "I don't believe I ever really had the opportunity to say. Well. Perhaps I did, but I—there were. Other concerns. At the time. But I know you'd rather it had—that I'd been the one to—"

"No," John said, the horror of that bubbling up in the back of his throat, choking him. "Christ, no. I don't know what I'd—I—Sherlock. No. I don't wish that it had been you." 

"But—" 

"I wish it had never happened at all," John said. "That's not the same thing." 

Sherlock was silent behind him. Silent and terribly still. Even his breathing had gone quiet. 

"Look, I don't—" John sighed, blew out a breath of air through his teeth. "I'm not good at this sort of thing, you know. You know that. There are things I should have said. Things I should have done. And I didn't. And this whole year, this whole horrible fucking year, has been because I—because—" 

"You lost your wife," Sherlock said. "The life you'd built for yourself. I took that from you." 

" _No,_ " John said. "And I never should have let you go on believing that for so long." 

"John, everything that happened was—" 

"If you say understandable, I'm going to lose my fucking mind," John said. "Don't. Don't say that. I know, all right? I've been told a thousand bloody times that what I—that the way I behaved was understandable. And maybe it was. Yeah? Maybe it was. But. Um. There's a difference between understandable and excusable, yeah? It's taken me a while, but I'm starting to understand that. And I don't want. I don't want to be excused. I—" 

"Is that what this year was? Penance?" 

"I don't—" John stopped, pinched his brow. "I hadn't thought of it that way. I just needed—I just wanted to get away. I didn't really give it any thought at all." 

"Your flat is awful." 

"Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. There's the tact I remember." 

"Your lease is almost up. You've been corresponding with a realtor in London." 

"I've been _ignoring_ correspondence from a realtor in London. And one in Chelmsford, too, but you must already know that. Exactly how much time did you spend going through my emails?" 

"Had to find some way to pass the time. Mycroft is getting slow in his old age." 

"Right, but—hang on, you went to Mycroft?" 

"Don't change the subject. You can't stay in that miserable flat for another year." 

"It's not that bad." 

"It's a crime scene." 

"I would think you'd consider that a perk." 

Sherlock snorted. The silence that fell between them was companionable, but charged with something that John could not quite identify. 

"I, um," John said. He shivered, in spite of himself. The air inside the car was quite cold, even with Sherlock pressed close, even with the warm weight of the blanket and the coat. "Just. Listen, all right? What happened last year. What I did to you. The things I said. That wasn't—it wasn't excusable." 

"I goaded you into it," Sherlock said. "Every step of the way. I thought you knew that." 

John breathed out through his teeth. "Sherlock." 

"It was all—I needed you to react a certain way. I manipulated the situation. You didn't hurt me, John." 

John scoffed, shook his head. 

"Well," Sherlock amended. "You didn't hurt me any more than I'd anticipated." 

"Sherlock—" 

"The cane, John. Your cane. I knew you'd bring it. I knew, right from the start, what it was going to take to bring Culverton Smith down. You played your role perfectly."

"That's the problem," John spat. "That's the fucking problem, Sherlock. It doesn't _matter_ that I reacted the way you wanted me to, that I was goaded. The problem is that I'm the sort of person who's capable of being goaded into beating his best friend half to death." 

Sherlock's entire stupid plan had hinged on his anger, his violence, his abandonment. Sherlock knew all of that about him, and still he—

That day in the flat. That last, terrible day. They'd sat across from one another like polite strangers and sipped their tea. Sherlock had been so very subdued. There were bruises on his face, and stitches above his eye. He'd tangled with a serial killer, but John had been the one to mark him. John had been the one to hurt him. 

And John had convinced himself that he was still angry, because it was easier that way. Easier than meeting Sherlock's injured gaze and owning up to what he'd done. 

"What you said, about penance? Maybe you're right. I don't know," John said. "But I. I had my reasons for leaving that day, and not coming back. And they weren't the right reasons. They've never been the right reasons." 

Sherlock shrugged. In the tight space, close as they were, John felt the motion ripple down his back. 

"You'd been trying to tell me to piss off in varying ways for some time," Sherlock said. "I was just too much of a selfish arsehole to listen to you." 

John curled in on himself. There was pain in Sherlock's voice, disguised as it was under a tone of flippant indifference. They'd been hurting each other for years. And for what?

"I don't want you to piss off," John said. He tipped his head back, the stiff ends of his drying hair rustling against Sherlock's shirt. Sherlock's arm was still slung across his chest, keeping him from rolling off the narrow seat onto the floor. It was surreal, strange, the sort of thing he could not ever have imagined over a year's worth of lonely, self-pitying nights. 

He could not help himself. He laughed.

"What?" Sherlock's voice was suspicious. "What is it? What's funny?" 

"Just. This. All of this. All of this, because sometimes when I look at you, I want to kiss you, and I don't know what to do with that." 

And there it was. Out in the open. Just like that. 

Sherlock said nothing. He did not move. 

The snow had piled against the windshield, cocooning them in a strange half-darkness. 

"You could try kissing me," Sherlock said. 

John tensed. "Don't be an arse." 

Sherlock lifted his arm, sat up. "I should let the car run for a few minutes. It's getting cold." 

John struggled up into a sitting position, the coat slipping down into his lap. Watched mutely as Sherlock climbed back over the console and into the driver's seat, turned the key. The engine rumbled to life. 

The heat coming through the vents did little to dispel the chill that Sherlock's absence had left. 

John clenched his fist at his side, pressed it hard against his thigh. Stared at Sherlock's back. His dark hair had dried in unruly tangles. It was quiet outside the car. He could not remember the last time he'd heard the wind. 

He thought again of Sherlock's face that day in the flat. Sherlock's eyes, sad and pleading and wanting something, something John had not quite been able to look at head-on. 

_You could try kissing me._

John shut his eyes. Breathed out a shaky breath. 

Sherlock did not turn around. 

"You should take off your trousers," John said. 

It had the desired effect. Sherlock twisted in his seat to shoot John an incredulous look over his shoulder. 

"They're soaking wet from the knee down," John said. 

"It's fine." 

"It's really not."

Sherlock frowned. There was a mulish set to his lower jaw, an expression John remembered well. 

"What did Mycroft tell you?" John asked. 

Sherlock blinked, clearly thrown by the shift. "You'll have to be more specific." 

"About Evan Bell." 

Sherlock shrugged, still watching him warily. "Only the pertinent bits." 

"And those were?"

Sherlock shifted in his seat, arranging himself against the driver's side door so he could face the back. "That he's dead. That you served together. Two addresses for a surviving brother; one in Chelmsford, one in Cumbria. Lestrade took the Chelmsford flat. I—" 

"Came here," John said. "Right. All right. This is—look. I don't talk about this. I haven't. There are some things that you just. Carry." 

Sherlock said nothing, watched him with shadowed eyes. 

"He was a kid, yeah? Evan. Just a kid. Barely nineteen, I don't know, but he seemed younger. We were friends. Not very close, but we got on well enough. Said we'd keep each other safe. The kind of promise you can only make before you really understand what you've got yourself into. He was—a bit guileless, I guess. Naïve. Maybe a little stupid. And stupid's not a good thing, over there. Stupid will get you killed." 

Sherlock made a sound that might have been agreement. John waited, but he said nothing more. 

"He was from a farm somewhere in the North Pennines." John shifted, frowned, memories colliding with the present. "This farm."

"Yes." 

"We all wanted—there was something about him that made you want to look out for him. I don't know. Some people are just like that, yeah? But I can't—I can't think of anyone less suited for military life. Well." He paused. "Maybe you." 

Sherlock made an offended sound. 

"Just—I thought he was probably running from something. A lot of people are." He breathed out, thoughtful. "Family expectations, I think. Ailing parents, an overbearing brother. He didn't want anything to do with the farm."

"Not an uncommon story, so I'm given to understand. So, which was it? Was he shot? Blown up?" 

John winced at the dismissive tone. "He overdosed, actually." 

Sherlock blinked once, fell silent. 

"I was the one who found him. He was just. He was just lying there. Eyes open. He'd been dead for a little while. Maybe an hour, maybe more." John smiled tightly, looked down at his lap. Thought of the way Evan had trailed after him for weeks after that, pale and haunted. Accusing. "I never even knew he had a problem. If he had a problem, even. He hid it well, if he did. And I never knew if it was. Um. Accidental, or if he meant to—" 

"He was unhappy." 

"Yeah." 

Sherlock said nothing more, just went on watching him. It was difficult to parse the expression on his face. 

"He was not my responsibility, not really," John said. He looked away from Sherlock, fixed his gaze on the snow-smothered window. "But. I felt responsible, all the same."

And Evan's brother had clearly come to the same conclusion. 

John smiled, furious with himself, and bit his lip. His eyes stung. He could not bring himself to look at Sherlock. "I made a promise I couldn't possibly keep." 

"It wasn't your fault," Sherlock said. His voice was low, careful. 

John sniffed, shook his head. His next words emerged as a harsh whisper. "And it wasn't yours." 

He turned towards Sherlock, finally, dared to meet his gaze. Sherlock looked struck, eyes wide and damp and fixed on John. 

They stared at each other for what felt like ages. The air inside the car warmed. 

Without looking away, Sherlock reached out a hand and turned off the engine. 

The sudden silence was startling. 

"Storm's over," John said. His mouth was dry. 

Sherlock nodded, went on looking at him. 

John scrubbed his hands over his face. When he let his hands drop, Sherlock had turned away. 

Something had passed between them, John thought. Something important. But it wasn't enough. He did not know if it would ever be enough. 

_You could try kissing me._

That wasn't the sort of thing that Sherlock joked about. Not really. Not ever. 

"Come back here," John said, finally. "It's cold." 

Sherlock's eyes snapped back to meet his. There was a furrow between his brows, a disturbance on his otherwise placid face. He shifted towards the console, then stopped, tilted his head. 

"No need," he said, and John thought his voice sounded just a little bit sad. 

John opened his mouth to ask what he meant, but then he heard it—distant but distinct. The steady throb of an approaching helicopter.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incredibly talented Khorazir has made [the most beautiful art](https://khorazir.tumblr.com/post/633416751341846528/inktober-2020-30-snowed-in-ink-and-watercolour) for the previous chapter. Thank you so much! <3

*

But if my silence made you leave  
Then that would be my worst mistake  
So I will share this room with you  
And you can have this heart to break  


\- Billy Joel, And So It Goes

*

Sherlock stood at the window in his sitting room and watched the dawn break.

The flat was quiet. Mostly. There was an irregular drip coming from the tap in the kitchen—he'd failed to shut it properly the last time he'd filled the kettle. Irritating. He should fix it. 

It was raining outside. It had been raining steadily since he'd returned home in the early hours of the morning. The rain, though unpleasant, was infinitely preferable to snow. 

He was tired. He had not slept. There was little point, not with the directionless energy vibrating along his skin, humming in his veins, leaving him restless and unfocused and ill at ease. He could barely bring himself to sit down for any length of time. 

He'd spent part of the night at the window, holding his violin without touching bow to strings. He'd watched the rain, studied the dizzying reflections of car headlights on wet pavement, and tried not to think about John.

When the window and its view of Baker Street below had grown stale, he'd gone rummaging through the flat, overturning boxes, kicking up clouds of dust and paging absently through books he'd not looked at in years. He'd discovered two cigarettes (stale, slightly crushed) tucked away in a teacup in the back of a kitchen cabinet, and had smoked them one right after another, perched nervously at the edge of his chair. He'd stood. He'd paced. The floorboards had creaked relentlessly underfoot. 

Finally, he'd returned to the window.

_You could try kissing me._

Stupid. _Stupid._ What had he been thinking? Clearly he hadn't been thinking. At all. He'd lost the ability to think somewhere around the time John Watson had climbed soaking wet into the backseat of a car and attempted to crack a joke while stripping himself naked. Well. Mostly naked. It didn't matter. The details were irrelevant. 

What mattered was that he hadn't been _thinking,_ he'd been caught off guard, he'd gone from believing John lost to him forever to having John _in his arms,_ and he'd lost what little remaining ability he'd had to hold himself in check. 

_Sometimes when I look at you, I want to kiss you, and I don't know what to do with that._

What had he been meant to say to that? What had John wanted to hear, if not reciprocation? His response (stupid, _stupid_ ) had been poorly received. Too glib, perhaps. Or perhaps John had not wanted reciprocation at all. There had been a certain degree of self-loathing in those words, after all, and even in his limited experience Sherlock was given to understand that one did not generally woo a partner by appearing despondent about the whole thing. 

But then John had said _come back here,_ and there had been an expression on his face that Sherlock had never seen before. And he'd—he'd wanted to—

Well. It didn't matter what he'd wanted. He'd not got the chance to find out what that expression meant. There had been a helicopter, and there had been bright lights and men in warm coats swarming all about the place, and Lestrade with his well-meaning but terribly timed concern. And they'd been taken to hospital, and John had been whisked away for tests and observation, and Sherlock had stood alone in the waiting area with the collar of his snow-damp coat turned up and his sodden leather gloves clutched uselessly in one hand, feeling more superfluous than he'd ever felt in his life. And so he'd— 

He'd gone home. 

There was no reason to stay. Not the sort of thing he'd be welcome for, really. John had made his position clear, recent thaw notwithstanding (hmm, perhaps best to avoid freezing metaphors for the time being). He'd not want Sherlock . . . hovering about, especially on the heels of hours upon hours of uncomfortable forced proximity. 

_Anyone but you._

Best to just. Go. 

So he'd gone. His stomach had churned the whole way home, a dull sick feeling that left him restless and unsettled. It felt disturbingly like guilt but—he'd saved John's life, he'd ensured that little Rosamund would not lose a second parent, and then he'd stepped away before his presence could become unwelcome. He'd behaved admirably. Surely that was nothing to feel guilty about. 

He could text. Later. Just to check in. Or perhaps email. Less intrusive, email. Not as urgent. John could ignore it, if he wanted. Well, he could ignore a text, too. But there was a certain intimacy to texts. They'd texted quite a lot, back when—back when they'd been friends. Best to tread carefully. 

They'd reached some kind of understanding, there in the car under its blanket of snow. It had been delicate, and careful, and honest. It was good. Perhaps there might be further communication in the future. That would be—good, as well. The sort of thing that he ought not derail by pushing too hard. 

Because he'd wanted to push. Oh, God, with John so close he breathed him in with every inhale, with everything he'd ever wanted dangling so temptingly close, with all of his inconvenient _feelings_ bubbling up so close to the surface—

_Come back here._

The look on John's face might haunt him for the rest of his life. That was—that was all right. He could live with that. There were things he wanted that he would never have. He knew that. It had not changed. There was no sense torturing himself over wishful thinking. He would be content with rebuilding some semblance of friendship with John. He would. He _would._

It would be enough. It would be more than enough, more than he could have hoped for over the course of the last long and terribly lonely year. And he _had_ been lonely. There was little point trying to fool himself into thinking otherwise.

His phone moaned. 

He startled, whipping his head around to stare at it where it lay, harmless like a coiled snake, on the kitchen table. The screen was illuminated.

He approached cautiously, already knowing what the message would say. 

_Happy birthday. Dinner?_

He laughed, because she was nothing if not reliable. He'd forgotten, but she had not. 

He slipped the phone into his pocket without replying. The last time she'd texted him—

(Best not to think about that day.)

Well. It hadn't been a day worth celebrating, really. 

He went back to the window, looked out at the rain. The sky lightened. Traffic grew heavier. Pedestrians bustled by down below, hunched under umbrellas, leaning against the wind. 

Downstairs, the front door slammed shut. 

Sherlock turned away from the window, his heart inexplicably kicking in his chest. Footsteps on the stairs. John's footsteps.

And then there he was, standing awkwardly in the doorway, his hand raised as if to knock against the frame. He blinked at the sight of Sherlock by the window, let his hand fall to his side. 

"Hi," John said.

Sherlock swallowed, said nothing. He was suddenly very conscious of the fact that he had not showered, of the disheveled state of his hair, the cigarette smoke that still hung heavy in the air. 

"They, um. Let me out of the hospital." 

Sherlock nodded slowly, unable to pull his gaze away. John, in the doorway. John at Baker Street. John, still in the clothes he'd worn the day before (dry now, but wrinkled and stained), looking drawn and pale and wearier than Sherlock had ever seen him. It made his heart ache, that sight, made him want to do something ill-advised like cross the room and take John in his arms. 

He went to his chair, instead. Sat. Folded his hands in front of him to keep from fidgeting. 

"There was no real reason to keep me there," John said, taking a few steps forward into the room. He scratched at the back of his neck, a nervous tell, terribly predictable. He was uncomfortable, but soldiering on.

"Oh," Sherlock said. He kept his voice mild, polite. Best not to let John see that he was nearly vibrating out of his own skin. "Good." 

"I thought—" John stopped, shook his head. His mouth was curving up in a semblance of a smile, but it was not a happy expression. "Um. I talked to Lestrade. He said you'd gone back to London." 

"Yes," Sherlock said, and there it was again, that dull sick feeling. He looked down at his hands. 

"He—ah—he also told me. That they found Arthur Bell." 

Sherlock lifted his head. "Oh?" 

John was no longer looking at him. He'd turned slightly towards the dark fireplace, his shoulders hunched. A wary animal. "Turns out he had a little flat in Chelmsford. Not far from mine, actually. But you already knew that." 

"Yes," Sherlock agreed. 

"Yeah," John said. He took a breath, seemed to steel himself against something. "Well. I guess at some point last night, he—uh—tried to go back. He must have seen the police there and, um. Realised he'd been found out. So. Erm. They found him in his truck parked outside the building." 

There was something final, something uncomfortable in the way John had pronounced _found._

"Alive?" Sherlock asked, when he could think of no other way around the subject.

John breathed out hard through his nose. "No."

_Good,_ Sherlock thought, though a glance at John's face told him that might not be an appropriate response. "Ah," he offered instead. 

John did not seem relieved or unburdened by the news he had delivered. He did not look away from the fireplace. His hand clenched and relaxed at his side, rhythmic. 

"Molly's still got Rosie," John said, after an uncomfortably long pause. "I spoke to her last night, from the hospital. She—uh. Was kind enough to take her home and keep her while—well, while all of this was—" he shrugged, waved his hand loosely in the air. There was something a bit helpless in the gesture. "I'm on my way to pick her up now." 

Sherlock lifted his brows, waited. It seemed like John had more to say. 

John cleared his throat, shifted where he stood. "Just. Thought I'd stop here first. To—" he stopped, smiled again in that pained way he had. "To thank you. Properly. I wanted to. But I didn't get a chance—you left. Before I could last night. So." 

"Thank me?" Sherlock blinked, leaned forward in his chair. 

"You saved my life," John said. He laughed without humour. "Again." 

Sherlock looked away. "You'd have found a way out." 

"No." 

He rolled his eyes, turned back. "As ever, you fail to give yourself enough credit—" 

"Sherlock," John said. His voice hitched. 

Sherlock stopped, swallowed. He suddenly found it very difficult to meet John's eye. 

"I wouldn't have," John said. He spoke slowly, his voice flat. "When you found me, I'd—I wasn't trying. I was just going to. I was just going to let it stop." 

Sherlock swallowed again. Thought of John, limp on his back in the flooded basement. _You're here,_ he had said. He'd seemed surprised. 

"Ghosts," Sherlock said.

"What?" 

"Ghosts. The search history on your laptop. You were seeing ghosts." 

John tipped his head back, looked up at the ceiling. His hand, at his side, clenched and unclenched. "Yes. No. Not exactly. I was—it was a way to cope. I think." 

"You saw Mary." 

John met his gaze. "Yes." 

Sherlock nodded, considered him. "Evan Bell."

John jerked as if he'd been punched. He did not look away from Sherlock's face. "Yes." 

"That's why his brother was able to get close to you. You weren't sure what you were seeing." 

"I'd seen him before. Right after he died." 

Sherlock pressed his fingertips against his mouth, the pieces falling into place, all of the bits he hadn't quite been able to see while standing in the wreckage of John's sitting room. "But you were surprised to see him again." 

"It was years ago. I—I thought I was over it. And then I thought I was losing my mind." 

"That's why you came to see me." 

John smiled tightly. "For all the good that did me." 

"You were—" 

"I was a coward." 

Sherlock straightened up in his chair. "Not the word I would use to describe you." 

"No," John said softly. "You wouldn't, would you? You. Um. Persist in seeing the best in me, for some reason." 

"Well. If 'distressingly unobservant' is the best quality you have to offer, then I suppose—" 

"Dick," John said, but he was smiling, a genuine smile, and that was good enough. 

Sherlock matched his smile and shrugged, conceding the point. He was warm. Warmer than he'd felt in ages.

"Sherlock," John said, and stopped. His mouth worked silently, and then he nodded, squared his shoulders. Bracing himself for something unpleasant. "I—there are a lot of things I should say to you. I don't. I don't entirely know where to begin, but I—I thought I'd start with 'thank you.' For saving my life. For coming after me. I don't think anyone would have blamed you if you hadn't, and—

Sherlock stood up, lifting his hand. He did not know what he intended to say, only that he needed John to stop speaking. They were prepared words, carefully considered, and he did not want to hear them. 

"John—" he said.

John shook his head. His eyes were damp, his hand clenched tightly at his side. "Sherlock, this isn't exactly easy for me. Just—just let me—" 

Sherlock did not want to let him. He took a step towards him, hesitated. 

"I don't know what I'm doing. I don't—I spent the last year of my life living in a place I don't particularly like, doing a job I don't particularly enjoy, and I—I still don't quite know why," John said. "I just. Keep doing things that I don't want to do. Yeah? I almost died yesterday. And it's not the first time that's happened, but it _is_ the first time that I—that I didn't even want to try." 

Sherlock took another step. 

"So. I want to thank you," John said. "No. I _need_ to thank you. Because if you hadn't come for me, I would have died there. And I'm glad that I didn't."

"John," Sherlock said again, helpless. 

"I don't want to be like Arthur Bell," John said, and sniffed hard. He flexed his hand, looked up at the ceiling. "I don't want to end up like that. Bitter. Angry. Letting his life fall down around him because he got dealt a shit hand and couldn't get over it. Blaming everyone but himself for letting it get so bad." 

Sherlock winced. Thought again of John as he'd found him in that basement, shackled to a shattered chair, his hair wet and plastered cold against his head. The way he'd smiled at the sight of him in the shadows. It had been a relieved smile, but not the smile of someone about to be rescued. It was the smile of a man who had realised he would not need to die alone. 

"Right," John said, and he sniffed again. He looked back at Sherlock, smiled tightly. "So. Thank you. And I—uh—I don't know if there's any going back, really. But I want you to know. Um. That the time I spent here with you? I, uh, consider those some of the best days of my life. I'm sorry if I ever made you think otherwise."

Sherlock swallowed, moved. "The very best of times."

The next breath John drew was shaky. He put his hand against his mouth, dropped his head. 

Tears, Sherlock realised. John was crying. He was quiet about it, muffling his hitching breath against the back of his hand. He stared down at the ground, as if trying to make himself disappear. As if he were ashamed. 

John Watson, shaking himself to pieces there in the middle of the room.

Sherlock went to him, his heart aching, his skin itching with the need to _do_ something. He curled one trembling hand against the warm skin of John's neck, let his other hand slide up John's arm to settle on his shoulder. Drew him close. 

John was stiff in his arms for a long, terrible moment, and then he broke. He sagged against Sherlock's chest, gasping, his arms coming up to wrap warm and tight around him.

Sherlock shut his eyes, nuzzled his face against John's hair, breathed in the scent of him (hospital antiseptic, old sweat and public transport, the faint traces of the basement floodwater he'd fallen in, and underneath all of it John's own natural scent, as familiar to him as his own). John was warm, his chest heaving as he struggled for control. His hands clutched at Sherlock's shirt, crumpling the fabric at the small of his back, holding him in place. 

As if he could leave.

_Please,_ Sherlock thought, without knowing, exactly, what he was begging for. Just that he wanted it. _Please._

His fingers traced gentle, absent circles on the skin of John's neck, carefully skimming over the bruise left by Arthur Bell's needle. John shivered.

"It's all right," he murmured, his lips against the crown of John's head. 

John shook his head, as if carrying out some internal argument. His face pressed against Sherlock's shirt, his breath warm and damp against Sherlock's neck. "Sorry," he said. His breathing had steadied. He started to draw back. 

Sherlock reluctantly relaxed his grip, let him step away.

"I should—" John swiped at his eyes, glanced towards the door. Evasive. Anxious. Looking to flee. 

"Oh," Sherlock said. He forced his face into a neutral expression. He thought about shutting the door, thought about refusing to let John leave.

He did not move. It required Herculean effort.

"I need to get Rosie, and, um—" John scratched at the back of his neck. He looked back in Sherlock's direction but his gaze skittered away before quite meeting his eye. 

There was an uncomfortable familiarity to the scene playing out before him—John's discomfort and sudden retreat, the invocation of Rosie as a convenient excuse. A year ago, Sherlock had held his tongue, had let John walk out of the flat and (so it happened) out of his life. Then, he'd mistaken John's behaviour as lingering anger over Sherlock's role in Mary's death, as resentment over his perceived obligations. 

And he _had_ been mistaken, he was sure of it now. 

Those other emotions had been there, of course they had, but above all John had been afraid. John had been afraid, and Sherlock had let him run. 

And John was _still_ afraid.

"Your flat in Chelmsford," Sherlock said. "The lease is up soon." 

John looked at him, his expression wary, mildly surprised. He'd clearly not been expecting the topic change. "Yeah, it's—it's up at the end of the month." 

"You don't have enough time to find something new." 

"No. Probably not." John sighed, and some of the life seemed to go out of him. He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbed. 

"Stay here." 

John let his hand drop back down to his side. Stared at Sherlock. "Sorry. What?" 

"Stay here. While you look for something. Or don't." Sherlock frowned, thought about what he'd just said. "Or don't look for something, I mean. Do stay here." 

"What are you—?" 

"221B Baker Street. This flat. Right here." 

"You want me to move back in?" 

"Is that so difficult to believe?" 

John blew out a breath of air, halfway between a groan and a laugh. "Frankly, yes." 

"Why?"

"How can you ask that?" 

"You've lived here before. You have some idea of what you'd be getting into." 

"Yeah, but—" John shook his head. He looked utterly bewildered. Not entirely an uncommon expression for him, but an unwelcome one in this case.

"But?" Sherlock prompted. 

"I'm. Um. Having a hard time coming up with _why,_ exactly, but I'm pretty sure it would be a terrible idea." 

"Impeccable reasoning, as always." 

"I just—after everything that's happened—" 

"After everything that's happened," Sherlock echoed, daring a step forward, back into John's space. "Living in a place you don't like. Working at a job you don't enjoy. Your words, John."

John swallowed, hard. His eyes did not leave Sherlock's. 

Sherlock softened his voice. "What is it that you _do_ want? Have you asked yourself that?" 

Dangerous ground, he thought. He was on dangerous ground. But he'd never been able to deduce it, not in all these years, and he wanted to know. He _needed_ to know. 

"I can't have what I want." John's voice was flat, his response immediate. His face had closed off. 

Sherlock shut his eyes. "Miraculous return from the grave notwithstanding." 

"Miraculous return from the—Mary. You're talking about Mary." 

Sherlock's eyes snapped open. "Aren't you?" 

"No," John said. He smiled again, a grim and terrible smile. "No." 

"Oh," Sherlock said. He'd missed something, he thought. Somewhere along the way, he'd missed something. 

"The thing about Mary," John said. He was still smiling, the sort of smile that made it look like his insides were being chewed up. "The whole time. I felt like I was doing her some big fucking _favour,_ saying I'd forgive her. And I was angry, Sherlock, I was—I was so—"

"John," Sherlock said, his voice low. They did not talk about Mary. It seemed somehow dangerous to start now. 

"Shut up," John said. "Please. This is the only time I'm going to be able to say this. So. Just let me—just—" he stopped. Pressed his hand hard against his mouth and breathed through his curled fingers. "Everything was fine, yeah? Business as usual. Everyone playing nice. Getting along."

"It was fine," Sherlock agreed, because it had been. Mostly. 

"It wasn't," John gasped, and the words sounded like they were being torn from his chest. "I wanted it to be fine. We all _wanted_ it to be fine. And I just—all that time, saying I'd forgiven her, and I was just looking for another way to hurt her. To make it even. Who does that? What kind of person just—?" 

Sherlock swallowed, said nothing. 

"And then she died. She died thinking I was some kind of saint, and all of that—everything I'd been carrying around—it just—" John lifted his hands, let them fall helplessly to his sides. "I keep wondering how I got here. Yeah? I never wanted to be this person. But here I am." 

"Then what do you want, John?" Sherlock asked again. He tried to smile, but thought it might have been a weak effort. "If not Mary. If not your life in Chelmsford. And if not this life, here." 

John smiled. It was a hard smile, pained. "I, um. Never said I didn't want to be here." 

"You said it was a bad idea," Sherlock said, frustrated. "Same thing." 

"No." 

"Are you certain they released you from hospital? You didn't just wander off on your own?" 

John laughed, a short sharp bark. He squared his shoulders. Met Sherlock's eye. "I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about you. You shouldn't want me here. No matter how much I might want—"

"You want to be here." 

"Of course I want to be here." 

Sherlock sucked in a breath, looked at him. Took in John's miserable, pinched face, his eyes still damp and red and irritated. John was not lying. John was telling the truth, and _hating_ himself for it. 

John wanted to be here. 

"I'm not offering out of pity," Sherlock said, speaking quickly, probing, seeking the source of John's discomfort. "Or out of obligation, or atonement, or because of a vow that I made at your wedding. Though I'm still not entirely clear on the purpose of vows if people just see fit to disregard them—" 

"Sherlock." 

He blinked, refocused. "I would like to have you here." 

John stared at him, his face blank. "You want me here." 

"More than anything," Sherlock said softly. 

"You realise I have a toddler." 

"That has not escaped my attention. I _am_ the most observant man in the world." 

"I can't even begin to imagine how that might work." 

"Try it," Sherlock said. "Try it and. If it's not—if you're unhappy, then look for something else. You can take your time. Find something suitable." 

"Look," John said. He clenched his hand, looked down at the ground. "No, look. I mean it. I mean this. You shouldn't want me here." 

Sherlock opened his mouth to object. John held up his hand. 

"But—" John said. He cleared his throat. "In spite of everything, _completely_ flying in the face of common sense, you seem to want me here anyway. And, God help me, I want to be here too. So." 

"Good," Sherlock said. His face had warmed. There was an uncomfortable prickling behind his eyes, and the odd fear that he was about to do something dreadfully sentimental. He clapped his hands instead, the sound sharp. "That's settled." 

"Is it?" John asked. "Settled?" 

Sherlock gave a frustrated huff. "What more do you want? A formal invitation? A rental agreement? Champagne?" 

"All right," John said, and held his hands up in a placating gesture. He was smiling, a bemused little thing that pulled at the corner of his mouth. "All right. It's just—this. Wasn't how I expected this conversation to go." 

"What did you expect?" 

"A bit more begging your forgiveness." John's voice dropped as he seemed to sober. He sniffed, set his jaw. "Asking if you thought there was any way we could. Well. See our way to being friends again." 

"Oh," Sherlock said, after much too much time had passed. His voice sounded faint to his own ears. "Well. That sounds boring. No need for all that." 

"Right," John said. He smiled, just a brief twist of his lips. 

They were standing much too close, Sherlock thought. He should step back. That would be the polite thing to do, wouldn't it? He seemed to have forgotten how to act around John over the course of the last year.

"I, um. Should go," John said. His voice was reluctant, a little regretful. "Only. I promised Molly I'd be there by two." 

"Best not upset her." 

"No," John said. He huffed out a little laugh, looked as if he were about to say more but thought better of it. 

"All right," Sherlock said. He shifted where he stood, unsure what to do with himself. He ached to hold John again. He wondered how he had ever lived with it, that ache. Surely it had been there all along. 

John nodded, turned away. 

Sherlock breathed out, a careful, shaky exhalation. 

"Just. One more thing." John had paused in the doorway, turned back. There was an odd look on his face.

Sherlock looked at him. Raised his brows. 

"What you said. Yesterday." 

Sherlock swallowed, looked away. His face burned. "I said a lot of things, John, you'll need to be more specific." 

"About. Um. Kissing you." 

Sherlock crossed the room to the window, looked out. The warmth was gone, replaced by an odd, trembling cold. He calculated the odds of a well-timed car accident. Stabbing. Gas line explosion. He was not picky.

"Sherlock," John said. 

He turned around, held himself very steady. Waited. 

"You weren't joking." It was not a question. 

Sherlock smiled with very little humour. "No." 

John sagged against the doorframe. 

"A hasty response, perhaps," Sherlock said. He took a breath. "But not untruthful." 

"I thought you were mocking me," John said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Sherlock swallowed, said nothing. 

"You could have anyone," John said. 

The words struck him hard. He closed his eyes, shook his head. "Not anyone, John. You. Only you." 

"Jesus," John said, and he bent over, put his hands on his knees, breathed. 

"Not quite," Sherlock said. He could not help himself.

"Come over here." 

Sherlock blinked, because the tone of voice that John had used was not one he'd ever heard. It was low and dark and—

"Sherlock," John said, his voice cracking. "Please. Just." 

He went. 

John straightened up, gripped Sherlock's upper arms. He could not quite seem to bring himself to look Sherlock in the eye. "Do you. Do you have any idea? Do you—do you have any idea how much I—?"

Sherlock shook his head, not knowing exactly what John was asking. He was out of his depth. He'd been out of his depth since John appeared in the doorway. Hell, he'd been out of his depth for the majority of recent memory. A year, at least. More than a year. Since that day in the aquarium when John had first turned away from him, Mary's blood still wet on his hands. 

"Sherlock," John said, pained, and kissed him. 

It was a hard kiss, bruising and clumsy, John's shaking hands clutching at the sides of Sherlock's face. 

Sherlock groaned. Gravity had lost all meaning. He stumbled forward, knocking into John, chasing the taste of his mouth, the solid press of his hands, the rapid drumbeat of his heart. His hands slipped around John's waist of their own volition, clutched at his wrinkled shirt, dragged it up and out of the back of his trousers. John shivered at the brush of Sherlock's fingertips against the bare skin at his lower back.

_Please,_ Sherlock thought again. _Please._

Sherlock tugged John forward, bringing their hips flush together. John gasped into Sherlock's mouth, one hand tangling in Sherlock's unwashed hair. The feeling was electric. He was trembling, vibrating with want, hot and cold all at once. Closer. They needed to be closer. 

And then he was backed against the wall, and they were still kissing, and he thought he ought to breathe but breathing was boring, terribly boring, and then John's hand was in his trousers, cool palm and calloused fingers a shock against his heated skin. 

He gasped and threw his head back. His eyes were closed. When had he closed his eyes? It was a struggle to open them again, but he needed to _see_. 

John was curled forward, his forehead resting against Sherlock's clavicle. His face was scrunched up, as if in pain. He moved his hand rhythmically, his thumb sliding over the head of Sherlock's cock and that was too much—too much—he couldn't— 

Sherlock groaned as he came. His legs buckled and he dropped to his knees on the dirty lino (should bribe Mrs Hudson into doing the hoovering) and he reached out blindly, fingers catching in John's belt loops, pulling him forward so he could press his damp, burning face against the stiff fabric of John's jeans. 

John's hand slid carefully through his hair. It was a soothing gesture, or, at least meant to be one. Sherlock did not miss the way that John's hand shook. 

Sherlock took an unsteady breath, and then another. He kissed John's leg, mouthing at the denim as he struggled with his flies. John made a pained sound and dropped to his knees beside Sherlock. He took Sherlock's face in his hand and kissed him, soft yet frantic kisses, peppered all across his heated cheeks and forehead. 

"Oh my God," John murmured into Sherlock's skin. "Oh my God. You. Sherlock. Fucking beautiful. Oh my God." 

Sherlock wrenched John's jeans open with a triumphant cry, reached for him with trembling, inexpert fingers. He wanted—he wanted—

He'd only just got John into his hand when John made a sound like he was dying, crumpled forward into his arms. He was gasping for breath, shaking, and he kept on turning his head, burrowing his damp face into Sherlock's neck and it was over but Sherlock wanted to keep him there forever. 

"Sherlock," John said, voice muffled against Sherlock's throat. 

Sherlock let his head drop back against the wall. His heart was still racing. That was—that had been—that—

John lifted his head, looked at him. Sherlock did not even try to hide his own face. It was obvious, the things he felt. He was a beacon. Hiding his face would hide nothing.

John stared at him, took it all in, and Sherlock let him. 

"Looks like you knew what to do after all," Sherlock said, after a long moment had passed. 

John did not react, the words clearly taking a moment to sink in. And then he laughed, tipped his head back, his face creased with amusement. When the laughter faded, and his gaze returned to Sherlock's face, his expression was serious. 

This was it, Sherlock thought. John had regained control of himself. He would either panic and flee (and Sherlock was under no illusion that he would ever return, not after this), or he would— 

"That was," John said, breathing hard. He did not show signs of wanting to flee. "I—just. I've wanted. I've wanted this. For years." 

"A quick shag against the kitchen wall?" 

John did not rise to the bait. "You." 

Sherlock looked down at the ground, painfully conscious of himself—face hot and chest heaving, rumpled and exposed and more vulnerable than he'd ever been in his life. His throat was tight. He was choking on emotion, but there were things he ought to say. Things he wanted to say. Things he needed to say. 

"I," he tried. "Um." 

"Don't," John said, his voice soft. Sherlock could not quite bring himself to meet his gaze. "It's—you don't have to—we maybe got a bit carried away. I don't regret it. But." 

"John," Sherlock said, and he lifted his head. Swallowed. His heart had caught, leapt at _I don't regret it,_ uttered with such certainty.

John looked at him. His eyes were damp, red-rimmed. 

"You asked me why I went after you. At the farmhouse," Sherlock said. He shook his head, unable to look away from John's face. "You must know." 

"Know what?" 

"Why I came for you." 

John smiled, his bewildered smile, the one that meant he was not quite tracking what Sherlock was trying to say. "Not the vow?" 

"Not the vow," Sherlock said evenly. He took a breath, thought about the air cycling through his lungs. John was still very close, his own breathing still unsteady. "Love." 

John shut his eyes, rocked a bit where he had slumped. He had not made any effort to clean himself up. He was a rumpled, flustered mess, and Sherlock loved him desperately. 

"Love," John echoed, his voice soft. 

"Is it really so surprising?" 

John looked at him. He opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it. Something in his gaze softened. He reached out a hand, gentle, and brushed at the hair on Sherlock's forehead. "No." 

Sherlock closed his eyes. The tenderness in John's face was almost too much to bear.

"I love you, you know," John said. There was a little tremor in his voice. "I think I always have. I think that—maybe if I'd—if I'd accepted that sooner, that things might have—" 

"John," Sherlock said, opening his eyes, leaning forward to take John's face in his hands, marvelling, briefly, that that was something he could do. "You spoke of ghosts, before." 

John swallowed. Held Sherlock's gaze. 

"You were my ghost," Sherlock said. He was close enough that his exhaled breath ruffled John's hair. "You haunted me, John. You haunted my every step."

"Sherlock—" 

"I would turn to speak to you, and find only empty space."

John shut his eyes, but did not pull away. 

"I have not always been the best at articulating my feelings." 

John did laugh at that, his head tipping back a little. When his eyes opened they were still damp, swimming with emotion. "No." 

"But I do feel," Sherlock said. "Deeply. For you." 

"I—" John said. He swallowed again, seemed to be wrestling with something. "I never knew." 

"Well," Sherlock said, his voice soft. "Now you do." 

John kissed him. Sherlock shut his eyes and let himself feel it, the soft press of his lips, the warm slide of his tongue, the slight tug of dry skin. The urgency was gone, the wild vibrating tension, the mad _want,_ and what was left in its place was comfortable and shockingly intimate. 

"The door is still open," Sherlock said, when John pulled back. 

Another hesitation, a flicker of bewilderment, and then John's gaze flicked towards the open door. He groaned, covered his face with one steady hand. "Thought you were talking in metaphors. Christ, anyone could have—"

"I'd have heard them coming." 

John shot him an incredulous look, and Sherlock's cheeks warmed. 

"Let's—" John said, detangling a bit, leaning back. "Just—" 

"Right," Sherlock said, moving his legs. His foot bumped the kitchen chair. 

John grimaced as he stood up, grasping onto the table for support. His knees popped. "Should have done that in a bed." 

Emboldened, Sherlock looked up at him. "Maybe next time." 

John smiled down at him, and the expression took years off of him. It was a small smile, but bright, unfettered in a way he had not been in all the time Sherlock had known him. He extended a hand, helped Sherlock to his feet. 

"Next time," John said. He spoke the words softly, almost like a promise. 

Sherlock's back twinged. He was not young anymore. Perhaps he should have thought of that before they'd got—carried away. Bed sounded nice. He wondered when was too soon to start hoping for that next time. 

"I'm a mess," John said. He tugged at his jeans, offered a sheepish smile. "Christ." 

Sherlock smiled at him. He was smiling too much. He was certain he'd never smiled this much in his life. "Use the shower," he said.

John grinned back. But his grin faltered. He looked at his watch. "I—that's tempting. But. Rosie." 

"Use the shower and I'll call Molly. She can bring Rosie to meet us for cake." 

"Cake?" 

"I'm given to understand that it's what people do on birthdays. Sometimes there's a candle, and sometimes there's a chorus of waiters, but there's always cake." 

"Birthday—" John's face crinkled up into a delightfully bewildered expression before dropping. "Your birthday. It's your birthday. Today." 

"Three hundred and sixty-five days in a year," Sherlock said. "It was bound to be one of them." 

John was not smiling. If anything, he looked gutted. "That. I never knew when it was. Your birthday." 

"Not usually relevant in our line of work." 

"Yeah, but. That's the sort of thing friends know." 

"Is it?" 

"Should be." John scratched at the back of his neck.

"Well. Now you know." 

John did not look mollified. "Last year." 

Sherlock shut his eyes. "Yes." 

"The day that I—that day. That was your birthday." 

"Yes." 

"Right," John said. He was breathing hard. 

Sherlock opened his eyes. Looked at John, rumpled and beautiful. The carefree joy that had radiated from him just moments ago was fading, bit by bit, from his face, and that was utterly unacceptable. He ought to fix this, and quickly, before John went and decided to spend another year punishing himself.

"I've learned two things over this past year," Sherlock said. 

"Hm?" 

"One is that I am—capable—of living without you." 

John flinched back, his expression difficult to read. 

"I _had_ wondered," Sherlock murmured, looking down at the ground. He felt inexplicably like laughing, though it certainly would be inappropriate. 

"And the second?" John asked.

"That I simply don't want to," Sherlock said. 

John said nothing. He swayed where he stood, his eyes never leaving Sherlock's face. 

"In case you have doubts." 

John shook his head. Smiled a little bit. "About you? None." 

"Shower," Sherlock said. "Then cake." 

"Demanding," John said, but the tension had gone out of him. He'd strayed forward, back into Sherlock's space. 

"It's my birthday, I'm allowed to make demands." 

"Oh? What's your excuse the rest of the year?" 

Sherlock grinned. He'd missed this. God, how he'd missed this. 

John went down the hall towards the bathroom. He hesitated, turned back. "You could use a shower, too," he said. "After the—" he cleared his throat, waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the wall. "And don't think I didn't notice the smoke." 

"I'll join you." 

"And you—wait, really?" 

"Yes," Sherlock said. "Just. Let me text Molly." 

"You're sure about that?" John worried at his lower lip. "I don't want to impose on her more than I already have."

"Don't be ridiculous. Molly loves cake." 

John shook his head—fond, Sherlock thought, it was a fond gesture, not a frustrated one—and went into the bathroom. The shower curtain rustled. The ancient tap creaked. Water started running. 

He had heard these sounds before. They were not new sounds. He paused to listen for a moment, all the same. 

After a moment, he picked up his phone, pulled up Molly's number. Thought about texting. Dialed instead. 

She answered on the first ring. "Hi." 

"Hello, Molly."

There was a pause—she was weighing her words, he knew. Whether it was appropriate to be concerned. He rarely, if ever, called her. He preferred to text. 

"Um," she said, her voice careful. "Happy birthday." 

There were noises in the background. Laughter. Happy babbling. The muffled sound of the telly. Rosie. 

"Thank you," he said. 

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," he said. And he meant it. 

She seemed to hear the truth in his voice. She did not press on with her questions.

"Someone once told me," he said, "that people have cake on birthdays." 

"You want to have cake," she said, and let out a surprised little laugh. "Seriously?"

"Might be a nice tradition to start." 

"All right," she said, and laughed again. Her voice was bewildered, but not displeased. "Um—" 

"Bring Graham." 

"You know his name," she said, patient, a little amused. 

"And Rosamund." 

Molly inhaled, the sound not particularly sharp but certainly audible. "John's there with you?" 

He elected to leave out the details. "Yes." 

"Is he—is everything all right?" 

He took a breath, looked down the hall. John had left the bathroom door half-open. He was making noise—small, domestic sounds—the splash of water, the click of a shampoo bottle. 

"Not entirely all right," he said. "Not quite. Not yet. But it will be." 

"Oh," she said. Her voice had gone thick. "Good. That's good." 

He cleared his throat. "Cake." 

"Right. Cake. That sounds—that would be nice, actually. Really nice. Yeah." 

"In an hour? And do let Mrs Hudson know." 

"Sherlock, you _live_ with her, you can just—" 

"Thanks," he said, and hung up. He dropped his phone back on the kitchen table. 

The kitchen tap was still dripping. He crossed the room, turned it off. Stood with his hands braced on the counter. His chest felt light, buoyant. It was an unfamiliar feeling. It seemed the sort of thing he ought to savour. 

He hesitated, just for a moment, then went down the hall. He nudged the bathroom door open. The air was warm, humid. John was in the shower, the curtain drawn. 

Sherlock cleared his throat. 

John tugged the curtain back a bit, peeked out. 

"We'll meet them in an hour," Sherlock said. 

"Cake," John said, water streaming down his face, his hair flattened against the top of his head. "You really want to go out for birthday cake." 

"Mm," Sherlock said, stepping into the room, the steam warm against his skin. "It's been a terrible year. I think I deserve something sweet." 

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so I leave them here: imperfect, but striving towards happiness. And, most importantly, together. 
> 
> Endless thanks to my wonderful beta [verdant_fire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdant_fire), whose thoughtful comments and suggestions made this story so much better. And thank you to [thetimemoves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WriteOut) for the cheerleading and support!
> 
> And of course, a huge thank you to [AllTheThings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllTheThings) for the FTH bid and the fantastic prompt that kick-started this story. I deeply appreciate your patience with me through the writing process, and I hope you have enjoyed the end result. 
> 
> This truly has been a terrible year. I think we all deserve something sweet.


End file.
